


Natural

by prolixdreams



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Season/Series 15, Angel Castiel (Supernatural), Awesome Jody Mills, Awesome Rowena MacLeod, Background Relationships, Bartender Dean Winchester, Canon Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, Castiel (Supernatural) Has a Bad Day, Castiel/Dean Winchester First Kiss, Coda, Death is not dead, Derealization, Episode: s14e20 Moriah, Falling Angel Castiel (Supernatural), Fluff, Frottage, God sucks and the world is better without him, Human Castiel (Supernatural), Human Jack Kline, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Motorcycles, Mutual Masturbation, Nausea/Vomiting, Other, Post-Canon, Post-Episode: s14e20 Moriah, Post-Season/Series 14, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, References to Depression, References to Illness, Road Trips, Sharing Clothes, Singer Salvage Yard (Supernatural), Spoilers, The Empty (Supernatural), Therapy, Trichtillomania, Wings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-09-13
Packaged: 2020-08-13 08:47:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 36,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20171467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prolixdreams/pseuds/prolixdreams
Summary: Castiel once said that freedom was a length of rope. Now that the writer of their lives is no longer present to make known what he'd like them to do with it, the Winchesters (and all the tangents of their found family) see that rope unspool, out into endlessness.There's a lot to grapple with, from untangling their own pasts (what they were made to do and what they would have done anyway,) to dealing with the fallout of the confrontation in the present, to looking at the future of a world without its god.(Picks up directly after 14x20: Moriah)





	1. Prodrome | Chapter 1: Triage

**Author's Note:**

> I'm well ahead on chapters, so it shouldn't be too long of a wait between them. Likely around twice a week.
> 
> Each chapter has a song, the way episodes do. 
> 
> Also, be gentle with my title card gif, I've never tried to animate anything before.
> 
> I am very much in my feelings about the show ending.

[Soundtrack: I Just Want You, by Ozzy Osbourne](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4nI2V07X6k)

Part One: Prodrome | Chapter One: Triage

  


There are too many of them. 

Dean clutches the chunk of fence in his hands, a rusted and flaking security blanket. He knows that’s all it is, that it’s no match for what’s converging on them. Sam knows it too, Dean can feel this like he can feel his own heartbeat. A heavy hand lands hard on his shoulder.

“Close your eyes,” Cas says, not a shout, but a low warning, and well, Dean knows the drill, he doesn’t need to be told twice. 

It isn’t enough, though. His eyelids are hot and the light’s going right through them, he has to drop the iron bar so he can cover his face with both arms. A thousand miles away, a second soft thud tells him Sam’s come to the same conclusion. The air is filled with an almost chlorinated, sterile smell that Dean recognizes as ozone, and there’s a whine, a high-pitched ringing sound that seems to drill right into Dean’s eardrums. It reminds him of the first time Cas tried to speak to him. Is that what he’s doing now? Speaking? Dean’s skin prickles with goosebumps.

Cas’ grip never lets up on the flesh of his shoulder, fingers digging hard enough to leave a bruise. Dean focuses on that, uses it to ground himself. 

Something brushes against the back of his neck, soft and smooth, and there’s a sensation like a blanket thrown at him from behind. 

Everything is whisked away, as if the entire landscape was the illusion of a stage magician.

There is silence, or near enough to it. Slowly, experimentally, he straightens up and pulls his arms away from his face. Seeing only the dark-red-nothing ordinary to closed eyes in a lit room, he permits himself a few blinks. 

The bunker library has taken the place of the cemetery and for a frozen moment, it seems like everything is some variety of _fine_, like they all stumbled out of a nightmare and into a perfectly ordinary... 

Night? Day?

_ What time is it? _

It had seemed like afternoon before, golden and hazy, but that was Chuck’s doing somehow, something he conjured for his own enjoyment. After he’d snapped it was night, but had he done_ that _ for the sake of drama too?

The clock on his phone is wild with unrecognizable glyphs. 

“Sam?” Dean’s gaze is wild with flickering disbelief, the first place it lands is on Sam, scanning for signs of damage. “You uh… good?”

“I’m… I think so. More or less.” Gunshot wound aside, Sam probably means but does not say, because that is a problem that they know how to solve. Dean is obviously inquiring about more urgent maladies.

“Cas? Damage report?” Dean isn’t sure if Cas will get the reference or just take it literally. It’s hard to predict, anymore, but it doesn’t make much difference in this case. He almost asks how Cas got them past the wards, but there’s been any number of minor warding failures over the last couple of years. 

Dean’s running theory about that is that Chuck screwed them up somehow when he visited on Amara-related business, but then, _ Chuck screwed it up _ is also his current theory on _ most _things at this particular moment. 

“I…” Cas swallows, frowns, does not meet Dean’s eyes. He slumps forward, leaning on the table like a runner with a cramp, and Dean’s across the room like a shot to guide him into chair before he collapses. 

There’s a line between Sam’s eyebrows as he comes up behind Cas’ chair. He’s cradling one arm with the other, but his movements are still gentle and tightly controlled. Adrenaline, Dean suspects, still blocking some of the pain. Sam asks Cas, “What is it?”

Cas doesn’t answer. Instead, he swallows again, and then it becomes clear why: his face tenses, his mouth becomes a hard line, and he gags. 

Dean wants to press him for what’s happening, but it’s no use. Cas’ won't answer, his mouth is occupied. He’s leaning forward in spasms, coughing, and doing something that isn’t _ quite _ vomiting, given that he hasn’t had almost anything in his stomach for probably years.

What’s coming up his throat and out through his mouth, falling between his knees and pooling on the library floor, is the blue-white light of grace. Cas’ hand comes up and grabs Dean’s for support and leverage, squeezing like he’s trying to break Dean’s fingers. 

Dean, for his part, does nothing to prevent this. He looks at the place where their hands meet and decides he’s fine with it, fine with whatever is needed.

“Sam--” Cas rasps the warning between coughs, not turning around. “_ Move.” _

This is nowhere near enough information, but Sam’s spent his whole life interpreting sudden, life-or-death instructions, so he dives out of the way through sheer instinct. Dean follows the movement with his eyes, relieved to find Sam clear of the mess of darkness that erupts with a _ pop _ and a shock-wave precisely into the space where he’d been standing. 

“Cas, what--” Dean’s speech cuts off the moment his eyes actually process the scene in front of him -- the rain of feathers and scraps of cloth. 

Cas’ clothes -- coat, jacket, and shirt -- are no more than a pile of neutral-toned ribbons around him. For a second, all he’s got on above the waist is his tie and a torn-away bit of his shirt collar, which Dean makes a mental note to be amused by later. He scrabbles off the tie (leaving the collar to fall to the floor as well) either in discomfort or frustration or both. 

“Wings,” Sam identifies, a little stunned and picking himself up off the floor between the library stacks. He eyes the chaos of overturned tables and broken chairs -- including the back and arms snapped clean off of the one Cas is sitting in. It’s not hard to imagine how hard he’d have been hit, how far he’d have been thrown, if he hadn’t dodged on command. “Cas, can you tell us what’s happening? Is there something we can do?”

“Curse box,” Cas croaks. “Contain as much grace as we can. Loose feathers. ...It’s... evaporating.”

He’s right, at least on spec: the grace that came out of him most obviously so far has already vanished into the ether, which seems very much not normal.

“Sam?” This is all Dean has to say. Sam hears the rest of the words anyway. _ Sam, go get a curse box while I stay here and watch Cas. _

A hush falls after Sam leaves the room, the only sound Cas’ ragged breathing and the rustle of feathers. Dean can’t help but look -- the wings are enormous, black and velvety, shot through with little lines of gunmetal gray in places, calling to mind myths of rocs and thunderbirds. They’ve never met or hunted either of those, though, not once, and it occurs to Dean to wonder if they’re real, or just the result of people getting an eyeful of angel. 

This is a question for another time. Still, despite their condition they’re easy to admire. Any number of words of praise about them rise to his lips, but he stops them before they make it out. Dean doesn’t know much about angel wings, but the way they droop and shudder and shed feathers doesn’t look like what he’d think of as _ healthy, _ and the last thing he wants to do is make Cas feel worse about it, if it’s headed somewhere bad.

Standing next to Cas’ chair is awkward, so he crouches beside it instead. The lull in the heaving continues, and Cas’ breaths even out. A thin sheen of sweat stands out on his forehead. The grip on Dean’s hand has loosened, but not let go. 

Dean has already been making little circles on Cas’ skin with the pad of his thumb for almost a solid minute before he _ realizes _ he’s doing it. 

Oh. 

He gets lost in his own head for a moment. 

A memory floats past, of when he was eight years old and his father gave him five bucks and sent him into a dollar store to buy toys for Sam. He was allowed to pick out exactly _ one _thing for himself, and he did: a pair of cheap plastic sunglasses. He thought they looked cool (they didn’t) and he wore them for hours, refused to take them off in the car, in the motel, even fell asleep wearing them. When he took them off, his eyes had gotten used to the dark cast on everything, and the world without them looked so bright it was almost blinding.

He’s realizing now that some other kind of Jacob-Marley-esque chain he was dragging has broken and fallen off, and the resistance is gone. He didn’t notice it happening in the moment (and he’s got a guess, now, of what moment it might have been) but all of the sudden he can feel its absence acutely.

“We’re gonna keep you safe, we’ll do what we gotta do, whatever it is,” Dean murmurs, soft and close. This is probably awful timing but he _ has _ to test this boundary, it’s going to drive him nuts if he doesn’t, and when he does, he finds it _ gone, _ the words come out easy, as if he’s always been saying them. “Cas, I love you.”

Cas’ head turns, just a little, and even that seems to bring a fresh wave of vertigo judging by the way he winces. His bloodshot eyes are a study in contrasts, in primary colors, and his brows twitch. At this distance, inches, really, Dean can make out every little micro-expression. Confusion. Surprise. Caution. Comprehension.

“I see,” Cas says, quietly worn too threadbare for tact, the corner of his mouth flicking like it wants to smile or grimace and can’t decide which. He visibly braces himself, like he’s about to lift something heavy. With eye contact that feels like staring into the sun, he says it one word at a time: “I love you.” And then, after he waits for a moment to see if anything else comes out and it doesn't: “That _ is _ interesting.”

“No kidding,” Dean agrees, a little breathless. 

He recalls moments when it’s been a drumbeat in his head: _I love you, I love you, I love you, _but he’d open his mouth and it would stopper his throat, and somehow what came out would be some ambiguous or familial expression, something true, certainly, but incomplete. 

All this time Dean thought it was his own fears and failings, a blame he carried on his own, but a different truth is making itself known, now.

“His story, His rules,” Dean says. The implications roll at him like thunder. It isn’t_ just _ this. It’s _ everything. _ He laughs darkly, almost a choke. “Now I can’t tell what I’ve fucked up on my own and what was Chuck’s idea.”

“I just...” Cas stops, and his eyes go out of focus for a moment as he fights a wave of nausea. “I wish Jack could have lived long enough to ask himself that same question. He was so fixated on what was real, or true. Dean, I think, deep down, he might have known… something_ . _”

Dean draws a deep breath and lets it out, a moment to collect himself. “How far do you think it’s gone? I mean--” it’s impossible to bring himself to say it, given how he’s treated Jack recently.

Fortunately, Cas spares him: “I suspect now that there have been times he exerted direct control, or tried to, especially in the last few years. In general maybe, but since Amara, certainly. On Jack -- on all of us.”

Cas’ eyes say what his mouth doesn’t: he has only scraps of evidence, but he’s choosing to believe it. He squeezes Dean’s hand where he’s holding it, and Dean squeezes back. Whether it’s true or not, Cas is grieving, they’re all grieving, and he’s right, it feels right to think this way. 

It gives them an excuse to come together despite how far apart they’d been only hours before, to save face and still reach for what they need, and that’s good enough. 

Dean’s thighs and knees are starting to burn from the crouch, and he tugs a chair noisily into position, facing Cas. When he slides into it, he scoots forward a little further and leans forward, his posture a mirror of Cas, so that their kneecaps touch and their foreheads don’t quite, but it’s a near thing. 

“Sam’s here. I’m here. You’re here. We’re gonna get you stable, and then we can…” Dean allows himself the littlest of smiles, now. “Compare notes. All you want. Figure it all out, together.”

Sam’s footsteps change from tile to cement to wood as he comes back through the kitchen into the library. Dean doesn’t leap away, or scoot back. For the first time, the scrabbling desperation to make excuses just fails him. 

Shit, Sam probably knows, anyway. That’s how Dean would have done it, if he were Chuck, writing the story. Though, there’s a lot of things he’d have done differently, so maybe that’s no indication. He wonders if this -- him and Cas -- was meant to be a tragic, star-crossed sort of thing, or if Chuck would have let them come together, eventually.

Maybe only to kill one of them again, maybe bring them back again. Maybe again and again, since he seems to like that sort of thing so much. The very thought of it leaves him tired.

Dean gets a flash of pleasure out of the thought that _ however _ Chuck meant for the air to clear between them, it definitely wasn’t supposed to be like this: easy and pragmatic, a natural understanding. Not _ His _ style, not by a long shot. 

Well, fuck Him.

There’s no comment from Sam, in any case. 

Cas’ eyes glaze over. “Box,” is all he manages to get out, shakingly, before he starts to spasm again. Sam passes the box to Dean, who grabs it and presses it into Cas’ hands just in time for it to catch the next bout of expectorated grace. Somewhere amid it all, Cas burns a new sigil into the side of it, a reinforcement for this specific purpose.

At the bottom of the little wooden chest, no bigger than a shoebox, the grace swirls around like oil, like the stuff in a lava lamp, but at least it doesn’t vanish the way it had on the floor. Cas pulls back from Dean, trying to get enough space to heave mightily this time, no longer making any effort to keep it all inside now that a suitable receptacle has been found. If anything, he seems like he’s putting his back into it, trying to get it over with. 

Sam’s on feather-duty. Dean realizes his hands are covered in what looks like sigil-covered gardening gloves -- a smart move, possibly unnecessary, but prudent -- and he’s going around the chaos of Cas’ wings, finding where feathers have fallen to the ground, collecting them. 

Dean gets to his feet. He doesn’t know if grace leaves a taste on the way out, but he goes looking for a remedy just in case. All they’ve got on hand is beer, but it’s cold and it’ll do, so he pops the top off a few bottles and brings them in to set down on the table. His mother’s voice in his head (still painful, but he knows where the blame really belongs, now) says the word _ coasters, _and he ignores it.

Did she bother with them, when she was here? Suddenly he can’t remember. Maybe it’s his own voice, after all.

When he returns to his seat, Cas is still holding the box, examining its contents. Relief is in his eyes when they come up to meet Dean’s. 

“Seems to be the last of it,” Cas declares, voice heavy with exhaustion. “At least, what’s coming out that way, rather than…” he gestures weakly to the wings. They’ve stopped shaking and twitching, now, but that’s almost worse, makes them seem like they’re hardly connected to him at all. An onlooker would be forgiven for imagining them some kind of elaborate, badly damaged costume.

Sam makes a gesture that Cas interprets correctly, and the box gets passed momentarily across the table so that Sam can add the loose feathers to it. Once it’s back in Cas’ hands, Sam shucks the gloves and takes his own seat, across the table.

“Usually I’d say better out than in, but in your case…” Dean concedes. It earns him the ghost of a dry smirk.

There’s a moment of uneasy quiet. Sam regards the two of them, one by one and then together, with unguarded curiosity. Then he asks, “Cas, I know this is probably all new, but, do you think you’re out of the woods, or…?”

Cas sighs miserably. “No. That was nothing. Losing the wings will be the bigger danger. I’m not sure... I can’t even put them _ away _ , because there’s nowhere _ to _put them.”

“Where do they normally go?” A line appears between Sam’s eyebrows. He’s worried, and he’s thinking. 

“A plane of reality that, as far as I can detect, no longer exists. Or, at least, is no longer connected to this one.”

“And you’re sure you’re gonna lose them?” Sam asks, and Dean winces at how direct it is, but it’s relevant, and he wants to know the answer just as much. 

“I’m not sure of anything,” Cas says, impatience with the questions coming through in his voice. He’s sensitive about the wing thing, which makes sense enough. “I’d like to lie down.”

He experiments with standing, and gets it on the second try, with the help of the table. Dean moves like he’s going to assist, but the look Cas shoots him is clear: he wants to do it by himself, no matter how much concentration it takes to drag himself, wings and all, down the hallway.

Unfortunately, he’s just past the edge of the table when he stumbles, and Dean has to catch him, because what is he going to do, just let him fall down? Sam’s on the other side of him immediately, and between the two of them, they get him to the room that’s long been earmarked as Cas’, no matter how infrequently he’s occupied it.

Cas goes to open his mouth, maybe to apologize, maybe to give ashamed thanks, but it doesn’t matter. Dean cuts him off. 

“You saved our bacon back there, man. An assist down the hall’s about the least we can do. You want some rest, you got it. Got your phone?”

There’s no reply, just Cas leaning to one side and fishing in his pants pocket. 

As soon as he draws it out, Dean plucks it from his hand and deposits it on the nightstand. “You need _anything, _I mean _anything, _no matter how stupid you think it is, you call. Text. Something.”

Sam nods along. On the way out, he asks, “Door open or closed?”

“Open,” Cas says, and Sam, last out the door, obliges. 

A few steps back down the hall, Sam and Dean exchange weighty, anxious looks. By silent agreement, they head back to the library. If Cas really tries to hear them, he probably can, which is fine.

“Alright. So. All hands on deck. Who are we calling first?” Sam says, all business.

If that’s how it is, then that’s how it is, and Dean lets himself be carried along on a stream of decisions. They work off the assumption that the graveyard isn’t the only place where things got hairy when Chuck made his grand exit, and start listing friends -- hunters, witches, monsters they’d let go, anyone that might take their call or know someone who would. 

This comes _ before _ they circle back to the Cas issue, and after a brief debate over whether it’s most likely a grudge thing that hit Cas alone, or an effect of Chuck’s departure with an impact on _ all _ of the few living angels, they realize there’s only one way to know, and that’s to find another angel and ask.

With reluctance, they add Naomi -- the only angel they have any idea how to get hold of -- goes on the list, the singular name under the _ Cas _column on the divided-up call list. That one can wait, probably. 

They reach almost everyone they most care about reaching (thank… well, not god, but someone, Dean thinks) and get to the following conclusions:

The Mills household is alive and well, much to the collective relief. They’ve all retreated to Jody’s cabin, along with New Bobby. Jody and Donna are mobilizing their respective police departments remotely, giving abbreviated, clipped versions of The Talk to anyone who was still in the dark before now, creating a kind of law enforcement phone tree. 

It’s exactly as they feared, to hear Claire tell it. Calls and messages and tweets, reports multiplying by the hour of just about every thing-that-goes-bump-in-the-night Dean can think of, and any number of things he can’t. Claire sounds almost excited, to Dean’s ears. 

Dean’s the one to call New Charlie, who answers the phone in tears. Donna volunteers her currently unoccupied camping cabin -- the closest safe place to her current location. _ Talk to as few people as you can manage on the road, _ Dean said to her, _ stop as little as you can. If you get into trouble, even just a little, you call immediately. _After a moment’s thought, he suggests calling every couple of hours until she gets there, to check in. He warns her that she might not be the last person sent that way, and they come up with a password she can ask for if someone comes to the door. (Dean has to reject both "swordfish" and "mellon" as being too obvious.)

Rowena, it turns out, is already on the way to the bunker when Sam reaches her. She’d felt it, the… shift, or whatever it’s going to eventually be called when it’s eventually spoken of in past tense, but she doesn’t know why until Sam tells her the whole story. When he’s done, she reaffirms her plan to meet them. _ My son always bet on you, _ Dean hears her voice, tinny and harried on the other end. _ And he was always right. Even when… well, he was always right, anyway. _

Sam warns her, “I’m not sure we’re the safe bet we used to be.”

She doesn’t care, she hangs up, impossible to dissuade.

It feels strange, to hear him say that out loud. Never before would Dean have called anything he touched a _ safe bet, _but both of them have something of a point. Crowley had found a pattern, like the sailboat in a Magic Eye picture, wherein the Sam-and-Dean unit always seemed to come out more-or-less on top, no matter how miserable they made themselves or anyone else in the process. 

Crowley had seen it. He may not have known the reason, but he’d cannily plucked order from the chaos of the universe, and he’d possibly come closer to the real truth of things than anyone else. As odd as it is, there’s a part of Dean that’s a little sour that Crowley had to die without ever knowing that. 

Much like what Cas said, about Jack dying before they could talk about what this new truth meant, it doesn’t seem fair.

Of course, all that is over now. 

“Is that the only reason we’re alive?” Dean mutters between swigs of beer. He wants something stronger. “Plot armor?”

The look on Sam’s face makes him regret giving voice to that thought. Sam, for all the strength and resilience that Dean admires in him, has never done well with the idea of meaninglessness. He can sense Sam’s itch to get in the car and go, to drive right back to that damn cemetery and swing that iron post until he goes down fair and square, fighting his knowledge that it just isn’t the most efficient use of his time. On his face is a strange variety of fear, a new type of fear, that Dean’s never seen on him before. 

They’re all feeling it. The only person Dean’s spoken to that was _ open _about it was Charlie, but that didn’t mean that the rest of them haven’t been stricken by the same rudderless, existential loss so clear on Sam’s face.

Still, they work. 

At some point, Dean’s phone rings. Sam glances over in time to watch Dean’s face register that it’s Cas, and with a sort of pained sympathy, he jerks his head toward the door. _ Go. _

He does. 


	2. Prodrome | Chapter 2: Landed

[Soundtrack: Love Love Love, by The Mountain Goats](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qv3-vANWwcU)

Part One: Prodrome | Chapter Two: Landed

He finds Cas lying prone on the bed, right up against the edge of it so his arm can fall into the space next to the mattress. His wings likewise dangle uselessly off either side. On the floor next to the bed, the curse box sits open like a laughing mouth, and Cas is trailing his finger along a feather inside, making little eddies in the pool of grace. 

“Hello Dean,” he says, not moving except to shut the box with a hollow _ tok _ that punctuates his greeting _ . _

“What’s up?”

“This is going to sound like a frivolous request.” Cas’ voice is muted slightly by his position.

Dean doesn’t say anything, he just waits for the other shoe to drop. 

“I’d like a drink.”

A breath escapes Dean, a little huff of relief, because it’s an _ easy _ request. “That, I am _ more _ than happy to do. I could use a break anyway. Unless you’d rather drink alone?”

“No,” Cas answers quickly. 

Dean’s got no shortage of liquor. The closest bottle of whiskey is in his room, just across and slightly down the hall -- he chooses that one for convenience, and so he doesn’t have to bang around in the kitchen and end up looking like he’s goldbricking to Sam. There are no _ glasses _in his room, so they’ll be drinking right from the bottle, but he’s confident that won’t be a problem. 

When he returns, Cas slides the curse box under the bed and pushes the bunched-up blanket onto the floor in its place. He maneuvers himself so his upper half hangs a little further off the side of the bed, so that he’ll be able to grab the bottle without sitting up and having to rearrange his wings. 

Dean recognizes all this shifting about for what it is: a somewhat grumpy invitation to sit, in that specific spot. So, he lowers himself creakily to the floor on the blanket. Sitting on the floor at forty isn’t quite what it used to be, but when he leans back against the side of the mattress, he’s got a lazy wing on one side of him and Cas’ face on the other. He can smell dry static and sunlight off him, and if that’s what it smells like when grace comes up, well that’s not so bad.

Cas takes a drink, and Dean follows suit. In the warm darkness, Dean realizes just how tired he really is. 

“Did you sleep?” He asks Cas, a sort of diagnostic for just how low his power level is. 

“A little, I think,” Cas guesses. He takes the bottle for another drink and passes it back to Dean, who does the same. “I tried to… get the grace back. Inside.”

“No dice, I’m guessing.”

“It wasn’t like this last time,” Cas muses. He’s so close Dean can feel the puffs of air when he speaks. “Falling, I mean. This is a whole... other thing.”

“Yeah, you can say that again,” Dean answers, taking another long swallow or two of whiskey and passing it back to Cas. 

“I do think I’m going to live, though.” Cas’ tone is careful, and Dean can’t quite tell if Cas thinks this is a good thing or a bad thing, a simple fact, or a choice he’s made. “I figured out a way to… I… it’s technical.”

Dean waits, again, in the dark. 

Whatever he was expecting Cas to say next, it wasn’t, “Do you know _ The Great Mouse Detective?” _

“What?” The word is punched out of Dean, through a startled laugh. “Uh, yeah. But how do _ you-- _from Metatron?”

“Yes. At the end--” Cas stops to take another swallow, and then another right on its heels. “They’re in the trap, and they’re going to die, and the Sherlock-mouse, says--”

_ “We’ll set the trap off now.” _Dean finishes Cas’ sentence by way of quoting the line, remembering the movie as a favorite of Sam’s, to which he’d been subjected only about a hundred times.

“It’s like that. But with…” He gestures behind himself again, to the wings. 

“That why we’re drinking?” Dean ventures. 

“Yes,” Cas admits. 

This, Dean knows well: liquid courage, to do something horrendously unpleasant and completely necessary. “They gotta come off?”

“Yes. I’ll be human after -- permanently. There’s no road back after this… procedure. But I’ll live, probably.”

Dean thinks but does not say that this is a pity, because Cas, shirtless and winged and stretched out, looks pretty damn cool. Softly, he says the _ next _thing that comes to mind when he thinks of Cas becoming human again: “I’ll never kick you out again, Cas.”

“I appreciate that.”

“Of all of my fuckups, that’s on the list of the ones I most _ hope _ was--” he sighs and rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands. “I don’t know, not me. Not _ all _me, at least.”

“If you get that one, can I have--” There’s a long pause, as Cas takes a drink and considers his mistakes. He does this little laugh that feels like a sawed-off shotgun and it sends a chill down Dean’s back. “I don’t know how to choose. I’ve made so many mistakes.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Dean says, all dry sympathy, and he does, and then Cas does. 

“I think I’m ready,” Cas says after they sit in silence for awhile.

“Yeah? For the…”

“Yes.”

Dean sits up a little, seriousness falling on his face like a veil. “Alright. What do you need me to do?” Visions of blood and bone-saws dance unpleasantly in his head.

In the end, it is thankfully not nearly as grisly as that. There is cutting involved, but angel blades are sharp, and grace, even just a little of it, is powerful. It’s all very complicated from Cas’ end, but the way Dean understands things, Cas is meant to hold his remaining grace at the spot where his wings meet his body. He’ll use it to sever and cauterize them from the inside, and Dean will make the needed cut from the outside, with the curse box poised below to catch any excess.

The only question is the balance of grace, Cas explains: if what’s left now is enough to heal the wounds after, there won’t be any problem. If it isn’t, he’ll wind up flayed. It’s not great news, but he re-emphasizes that they’ve done much dumber things with significantly worse odds, and Dean has little choice but to trust it. The longer they wait, the worse the chances.

When Dean suggests turning the light on, Cas says no, Dean will have to see precisely where the grace is shining through to know where to cut. Odd as it is, it’s safer to do it in the dark. Dean accepts this unquestioningly, both because he trusts Cas, and because he thinks it might be easier. Contrarily, he’s always felt safer in the dark, less vulnerable.

Cas tips the whiskey bottle back one more time before he clambers to his knees at the corner of the mattress. Dean stands perpendicular to him, at the foot of the bed, blade heavy in his fist. 

“I think I’d like to kiss you.” Cas asks, with the trademark unselfconscious ease of the inebriated. “Before we start, in case something goes wrong... After everything, it would be _ ridiculous _ to die without--”

He doesn’t finish his sentence. Dean pivots and bends and grabs Cas by the chin to steady them both before covering Cas’ mouth with his own. In the same moment they both sigh through their noses and move to deepen it, and their teeth click. Dean doesn’t care if it’s clumsy and stuff as Cas responds kind of like he's being kissed through a quilt. He’d still have traded every other kiss in his life for this one. 

Thinking of it, it’s his first kiss --in his life-- without Chuck’s puppet strings on him. He wonders if it isn’t too dramatic to call this _a true act of free will_.

Dean pulls back, and his voice is rough when he says, “That... doesn’t mean I think anything’s gonna go wrong.”

Cas nods, looking only marginally less tense than before.

Dean echoes the gesture and retakes his position: at a ninety degree angle to Cas, standing as Cas kneels on the bed. One hand holds the blade, the other is wrapped firmly around the top of the right wing, near where it meets his back. It feels like some kind of ritual sacrifice.

_ Scapulars, _Dean remembers Cas said in his explanation. He mouths the word silently to himself. 

The first wing is done in a flash. Once it all gets started, the bright line appears just as Cas said, and Dean doesn’t hesitate. A single long, firm slash completes the cut that started from inside. It’s like scoring glass. The wing comes away, and Dean has to grab it from below to move it out of their space. For a moment, Cas’ back is searing, molten with light. 

Cas hisses and growls through it, clearly in pain. To Dean’s surprise and relief, though, he’s fairly sure this is far from the worst condition he’s seen in his friend.

A little excess grace bleeds away into the waiting curse box, but most of it goes to heal the place where the wing was removed. When the light on his body goes out, the soft glow from the open box on the floor illuminates a vast red scar, the skin swollen and shiny like it was burned. Conservation of mojo, most likely -- not healing it all the way, just to “stable” to make sure there’s enough left for round two.

The second one is even easier, after the experience of the first. 

And then it’s all over, and both wings lie still (_ dead, _ Dean can’t help thinking, having given themselves up so that Cas might live) on the concrete floor. Dean hesitates, and then he takes the top sheet off the bed (wiggling it out from under Cas’ knees) and covers them, because it just seems like the thing to do. If he had to cut his own legs off he wouldn’t want to stare at them in the corner of the room, he figures. He switches the lamp on, casting a soft orange light about the space.

Cas pants for a moment, and then catches his breath and sinks downward into a more restful pose, one where he sits on his heels. Dean thinks his expression looks for all the world like he’s just had two enormous splinters removed.

“You good?” Dean asks. 

“No,” Cas says. “But, yes.” Dean understands what he means: not good by any normal person’s definition of the word, but by Winchester standards? He’s not in any imminent, fatal danger, which is what passes for _ good _around here these days. 

“Is there anything in there?” Dean asks, hesitantly. “The feathers, I mean? What do we do with them?” 

“They’re not like the ones that fell earlier, they’re inert now,” Cas says. “Though I can think of a few reasons that we should probably burn them, just to be safe.”

Dean sets the angel blade down on the ledge near the head of the bed. He climbs onto the mussed mattress himself, and gathers a pliant, exhausted Cas into his arms. It’s so strange, how easy it is to do this. He almost feels as though he’s outside his body, watching himself from above.

“I’m human,” Cas says into Dean’s shoulder, muffled. “Again.” He mutters something else, after that, and Dean has a hard time understanding it, it takes a moment to realize it isn’t English. He thinks he catches Jack’s name in it, though.

All Dean does is nod lightly against him. He doesn’t know what to say that wouldn’t possibly get taken poorly. His mind suggests one thing after another that he rejects -- he doesn’t want to sound too unhappy about it, nor too pleased, nor like he doesn’t care at all. None of those things are true, and nothing seems quite right, so he goes with that and says nothing.

Cas raises his head and meets Dean’s eyes. His hair is in chaos and his skin is warm, and Dean would like to kiss him again, now that the worst seems to be over, though when he adds up all the circumstances of the last couple of days, this included, he has no idea if that’s appropriate.

He moves slowly, telegraphing, giving Cas a chance to say something or stop him, but no protest comes.

The moment he presses his lips to Cas’, he hears a sharp intake of breath and there’s a return of pressure that practically bowls him over completely. He has to fumble behind himself to brace against the low headboard and it pulls an embarrassingly high-pitched noise of surprise out of him. 

He pulls back. 

“That’s...” Cas is breathing like there’s not enough air in the room. 

“Different? From... just before?” Dean can’t keep himself from looking at Cas’ mouth, but he realizes Cas is doing the same thing more or less, so he doesn’t feel_ too _ stupid about it. 

Cas touches his own lips in disbelief and reaches for a way to explain it, and settles on, “Completely.”


	3. Prodrome | Chapter 3: Diversion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 2 & 3 originally were together but I split them up for length... but I still felt they should get posted together anyway. :-)

[Soundtrack: Love Reign O'er Me, by The Who](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhSdNy1snaU)

Part One: Prodrome | Chapter Three: Diversion

The few angels Dean’s ever met that had any interest in the things a human body could enjoy -- food, drink, sex, whatever -- always seemed like they were diving headfirst, like they went from zero to one hundred and never looked back. Maybe this is why: maybe with grace, they’re just so separated from it all, it takes that much input just to begin to reach them at all. 

A dark part of him is pleased, excited even, by Cas’ _ human _sensitivity, and he has to step on the leash of those thoughts before they start to drag him around in earnest. There are a million reasons he needs to keep his cool here. With a jealous, angry little churn, Dean is forced by to recall the aftermath of a terrifying night when an _ angel of mercy _just about put Cas out of his misery -- misery that Dean was (and is) convinced that he inflicted. 

When it was done, that night, when Cas had nowhere to go, Dean drove to a motel a little above his usual grade, paid for a room, and got some pizza and a couple of beers in Cas. 

He then artfully concealed his utter _ horror _ when Cas tipsily began to ramble about, of all things, _April, _a name he would privately have been just as happy never to hear again. Dean learned a lot of distressing things in a few minutes. Cas explained how he'd felt obligated. She’d been so kind, Cas said, the words tumbling out of him. She’d wanted to.

Dean didn't want to ask Cas out loud if he was saying what he seemed to be, he didn't want to hear the answer out loud, but the words somehow wound up coming out anyway.

He’d been exhausted, Cas went on, burning the details into Dean’s brain, but to turn her down would have been awkward and who knows how she could have reacted? He didn't want to sleep on the street again, and there were much worse ways to secure a bed and a shower and a meal, but he’d have chosen additional sleep instead, if he’d felt he could safely choose.

Cas confessed, then, that he had fibbed about his feelings on it before, because he’d already been embarrassed about getting stabbed and had thought Dean would find him pathetic. _ I wanted you to think I was a good human, _Cas said, smashing Dean’s heart into a million pieces. 

And Dean just tried to play it off like it was no big deal, the way you do with a kid who falls down and gets scraped up, ‘cause they won’t freak out if you don’t. He’d started the drive to the motel thinking about how he’d almost lost Cas twice in an alarmingly short period of time and maybe, _ maybe I’ll tell him, maybe I’ll tell him everything, _ but he sure as fuck wasn’t going to spill his guts after _ that, _lest he look no better than that reaper bitch, plying him with comfort and then getting all grabby.

No, he kept his shit to himself and let Cas sleep and dropped him off in the morning at his stupid job at that stupid store with its stupid customers that did not, not one of them, deserve Cas. 

Dean pushes this memory aside, tries to stay present. There is a tendril of thought, something like _ ...going to kill god if it’s the last thing I do… _that gets smothered when Cas kisses him again, all gentleness and suggestion this time, tongue darting across Dean’s lower lip, giving him actual goosebumps. It takes every scrap of willpower Dean can dredge up to stop, to catch his breath, to put voice to his worry.

“Cas, I am... a-hundred-and-ten percent in favor of _ wherever _ this is going, for real, but I gotta check in, here, man. You just lost your _ son _ , and your _ wings _ , and…” Dean shakes his head and shrugs under the weight of it all, “Your entire understanding of reality. Are you _ really sure _ that you’re... okay?”

Fortunately there’s still enough of the old literal-interpretation Cas in there that he takes this concern at face value, as it is intended, and not as some kind of stealth rejection. He makes his counter-argument, though: 

“I know. All of that. And... that’s just it. We don’t know what’s going to happen next. We don’t even know if the world will_ exist _ tomorrow, whatever tomorrow even _ is _ now. So, no, I’m not _ okay, _ but yes, I want to feel something _ else. _ Specifically, I’d like to let myself enjoy the _ one, singular thing _ that isn’t awful, about all of this.”

It’s a convincing argument, and the iron authority with which it’s delivered stops Dean’s brain working for a second, and is that a _ last night on Earth _ speech Dean detects? He hopes it doesn’t come true, but he respects the angle.

“What _ did _ Chuck want?” Cas wonders, voice drier than the desert, as dry as an alien planet baked eternally by the sun. His jaw is set and there’s mischief in the way his eyes narrow, and the overall effect makes Dean’s heart beat like a trapped fly smashing itself against a window. “For us to pine, miserably, desperately, in secret? Haven’t we spent _ enough _ time under that particular thumb?”

There’s_ poison _ there, which is way, way hotter than it has any right to be. It makes this particular little rebellion feel much less toothless than it really is.

They’re kneeling on the mattress springs in a way that’s silly and frankly a little uncomfortable, so Dean shifts, sits with his legs stretched out before him. He reaches out and Cas follows him down, kneeling around him, resting on Dean’s thighs. 

A hand slides up Dean’s shoulder, to his neck, to his jaw, and before he realizes what he’s doing, Dean’s already craning his neck to press back against it, eyes closed, openly hungry for the touch and devouring it without hesitation. He follows a whim: he takes Cas’ hand in both of his and moves it, presses it against his lips and kisses the lines of his palm, the insides of his knuckles, the prints on each fingertip.

_ It doesn’t matter if you’re human, _ he means to say, _ you’re still worthy of prayer. _

When he opens his eyes and looks up, Cas is frozen, lips parted, mesmerized. After a moment, he clearly remembers himself, because he slouches to give himself better access to Dean’s mouth. His hands are on either side of Dean’s face now, and it’s so easy for Dean to just let himself be tilted upward, a sunflower reaching for the light. 

Dean’s hands travel naturally to Cas’ waist, and then to his back. He stops, realizing he’s close to the new scars, and he gets use of his mouth again long enough to ask, “Should I avoid, uh--”

Cas kisses his forehead, his temples, his jawline. “No,” he says, with that voice like a purring engine.

“I…” Dean feels a lazy smile take hold, the kind that considers becoming a laugh but doesn’t quite get there. “No, don’t avoid them, or no, don’t touch them?”

There’s a hot puff of air against his neck, just below his ear, as Cas laughs into his skin. He reaches back, puts his hand over Dean’s wrist, and moves it to the center of one airfoil-shaped scar. 

_ As you wish, _Dean thinks to himself. Cas would probably get the reference now, but he keeps it to himself anyway, his own little secret.

With both hands, Dean makes symmetrical strokes from the top of the taut, textured skin to the bottom, with gentle pressure, careful not to scratch. “Like this? It doesn’t hurt?”

“It feels... good,” Cas sighs. He slumps forward, until he’s bent down enough to rest his forehead on Dean’s shoulder. 

Dean notices that he doesn’t actually say that it _ doesn’t hurt. _

Still, Dean doesn’t miss the opportunity, the angle that gives him access to Cas’ neck and shoulder. He plants little clusters of kisses on the skin there as he draws nonsense symbols into Cas’ back. On one upward sweep, both of his hands come up the back of his neck and into his hair, where he attends to Cas’ scalp with fingertips and short, sharp nails.

Cas grasps Dean’s hips through his jeans and makes a sort of closed-mouth, breathy hum that Dean wishes he could record and put on an album that he could play back forever.

The encouragement emboldens Dean to explore, and everywhere he lavishes, he gets rewarded further. He tries to spend less time regretting how little they've touched until now, and more time enjoying the feeling like he's half of a pair of magnets no longer held apart, able to crash together and stay that way. On the optimistic assumption that this will not be the last time this happens, he memorizes the places that earn him his favorite reactions: Cas’ earlobe right at the border of where the cartilage starts, the notch of his collarbone, his sides at the waist, his sternum just above the solar plexus. 

Before long, Cas is squirming reactively against him, as if he can hardly help it. His breathing syncopates beautifully against the shell of Dean’s ear. 

Dean rests his hand where Cas is conspicuously hard and clearly seeking contact. He murmurs, “Is this what you wanted to feel?” 

_ “Dean, yes,” _ comes the whispered reply. 

They’re only separated for a moment, just long enough for each to wiggle out of what they’re wearing from the waist down. Dean doesn’t even try to be cute about it, he just wants to feel that pressure and weight of Cas on him again without delay, now that he’s had it he’s bereft without it. 

Fortunately, Cas has the same idea. He helps Dean out of his shirt from there, a shedding of the last bit of fabric that was between them. When Cas is back in his lap, Dean leans back on one elbow.

“Is this alright?” Cas leans back to ask in a half-whisper, kneeling over him and providing a view that makes Dean glad he doesn’t have a heart condition, ‘cause it might just kill him. 

His free hand rests on Cas’ tensed thigh. He slides it up, lingering on the V of his hip. “_Alright _would be the understatement of the century,” he says, before his hand wanders further inward. 

Dean rests his fingers loosely on Cas’ cock, not unlike the way he'd done before when they'd been clothed. He doesn’t move them from there, just yet -- he shifts his gaze upward a bit slowly, savoring the flush on Cas’ chest and neck before he reaches his goal: eyes the color of mountains on the horizon.

He’s got _ all _of Cas’ attention when he drags his fingertips up the length lightly, tracingly. Cas’ eyes flutter but don’t quite close. He’s enjoying looking back, Dean realizes, and forms a loose circle with his hand. 

Cas tips forward, holding himself up with one hand. His other hand joins Dean’s in the cramped press between their bodies. He’s not as subtle or gradual about it when he takes hold of Dean, but Dean’s already twitching, with a strand of precome bridging from the tip to his belly, he just wants to be _ touched, _already, he doesn’t really care about finesse.

He pushes into Cas’ hand to show his appreciation, and goddamnit Cas actually _ smirks _a little, like he just figured out the power he has here.

It’s just shy of involuntary, the way his hips stutter and he grinds against Cas’ palm. Cas has more range, and he knows it and he doesn’t waste it, pulling back through Dean's fist and sliding forward as he explores the sensations available to him. Dean barely has to _ do _ anything, though he does anyway, trying out the little things _ he _ likes on someone _ else _for the first time and finding that most of it does, in fact, translate.

The warmth and the friction, the sound of Cas’ breath hitching, it’s fantastic, in the literal sense: like something from actual fantasies he has had. 

“Cas--” Dean starts, but is abruptly cut off as Cas lets himself down close enough to reach Dean’s mouth, to lick into it and breathe into it -- a blessing that Dean receives with gratitude as he gasps for that same air. 

Cas says something fluid and snakelike in some other language, a rasping mutter against Dean’s mouth, he has no idea what the fuck Cas is saying but he loves it anyway. The things he feels and the things he does to Cas blur together as they get twisted up in one another’s pleasure.

Dean’s done for. He hears himself like from a distant dream, muttering, “...no idea how long I wanted--Cas--fuck--” and then Cas owns his mouth again with a possessive noise and that’s it for him. He digs his fingers into Cas’ hip and comes with a muted, graceless whimper. 

Cas isn’t far behind him -- the whiskey’s got to be the only thing that held him off this long, Dean realizes -- hissing and making these sweet, quick little surprised sounds, burying his face in Dean’s shoulder as he adds to the slick mess between them.

In the quiet of the concrete walls, all they hear is their breath, and the distant sound of the water pumps linked to the pipes. 

The tacky feeling when they eventually pull apart is obscene to the point of humor. 

He reaches for the discarded shirt -- it hadn’t hit the floor, so he knows it’s in arms reach -- and gives himself a cursory sweep before handing the shirt to Cas with what he hopes is a roguishly charming sort of look. 

Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, Cas doesn’t seem swayed either way. He quirks an eyebrow and looks down at his own belly as he slides the t-shirt against his skin, more fastidious than Dean by far, like someone with new glasses meticulously clearing away a fingerprint.

Any pretense is dropped the moment their eyes meet again -- something about it makes a laugh bubble out of Dean, which turns out to be contagious. 

Cas settles in against Dean’s supine body. He draws in a long breath and sighs it back out, sounding like aloe on a burn. 


	4. Prodrome | Chapter 4: Tethers

[Soundtrack: Dream State/Familiar Place, by Lucy Dacus](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSldFG8dpnI)

Part One: Prodrome | Chapter Four: Tethers

“I forgot how strange and different everything feels. Mostly in a good way” Cas rubs his finger against the sheet, then against his own stubble. His tongue darts out, and the look of focus as he tastes his own upper lip is like a sweet vice around Dean’s heart. 

Dean only dips out of the room for a moment to secure a different t-shirt to wear (and one for Cas, while he’s at it.) Even after they’re dressed, they still cling to one another like the mattress is a piece of a floating shipwreck.

They talk, after that, a conversation that probably should have happened years ago, maybe sometime after purgatory. It’s waited too long, like everything. 

Dean’s the same person as he was yesterday, more or less, so while it’s a _ little _easier to discuss how he felt before and how he feels now, he still fumbles with it. Cas is patient, though, and holds the space around him as he works through it. Dean does his best to return the favor. 

There aren’t many surprises, for either of them. They can’t pick apart the emotions they’d have felt either way from what was foisted upon them, and the same goes for the wounds they’ve inflicted on one another. In the end, a sort of settlement is arrived at, to take the good and leave the bad, to wipe the slate clean where their wrongs are concerned.

Chuck, Dean points out, would _ hate _this. “Not enough melodrama for Him.”

“That’s as good a reason as any,” Cas says. “I feel guilty. Angels were supposed to be closer to Him. I feel as though I should have seen it. Should have known, or guessed, or... something.”

“If Chuck kept anyone in the dark the most, it was you,” Dean points out. “Angels in general, but you in particular.”

Cas’ stomach joins the chat. It’s alive now, and it’s got nothing in it but whiskey. Dean suggests some food first, and then as much sleep as he can get. 

They emerge into the light of the hallway. Cas is vulnerable -- tired, hungry, newly human again, and Dean doesn’t hesitate to take his hand even as they step into the library, a silent reassurance: _ I’ve got you, we’ve got this. _

One of the chairs in the library has been replaced with a wheeled war-room chair, and Sam’s laptop is on the far table, closest to the entrance. A cord runs from the HDMI port to a little adapter box, to which he’s linked two more monitors, one on each side of the computer itself. Dean’s not even sure where he got them, but they look relatively new -- not original Men of Letters gear, to be sure.

Dean’s got no idea what half the black boxes do, and the area beneath the chair resembles a pit of black and gray snakes. One particularly long wire-serpent stretches all the way into the war room, behind one of the mysterious banks of electronics there.

For all his focus a moment before, Sam looks up the second Dean and Cas appear in view. He’s clearly glancing over Cas’ shoulder, to where the wings no longer are, and then to where their hands are linked, and his face is a question.

“I’ll... be alright,” Cas answers it. 

Sam lets out the breath he’d been holding. “Oh, Thank--Uh--Well--I’m glad.”

“When’s Rowena get in?” Dean asks. He wants to know, and he wants to take the attention off Cas, and this accomplishes both goals.

“Well, the clocks are still...” Sam does a gesture that Dean understands to mean _ weird, not right. _“But she said not for a while yet.”

“Okay, how ‘bout we all refuel and get a little shuteye?” Dean suggests.

A pained expression crosses Sam’s face, and he looks down at his screen. From the liminal space between library and kitchen, Dean can see several windows on the far-right monitor. One he recognizes as a twitter feed, another is facebook, and another he doesn’t know, it looks like a darker, sleeker version of an old Prodigy chat-room, and by the line-by-line flicker, the conversation looks to be moving quickly. 

He leans to one side and gets a better look at the left hand screen, which displays highlighted dots scattered across a map of the country. 

Dean revises: “I’ll make something while you…” he gestures vaguely at the computer, “get things in a state where you can sleep for awhile. But you gotta sleep sometime, so...”

This is easier for Sam to agree to, and he dives back into his keyboard to handle his end of that deal. 

There’s a swell of almost parental pride in Dean’s chest, living alongside all his worry. Apparently Sam being a goddamned unflagging genius hero hasn’t changed. Kid shot god with his own gun and now he’s digging his heels in to deal with the fallout. Dean was pretty proud of himself when he killed Hitler, but he’s pretty sure Sam’s got him beat, here. 

All the while, Cas sits at the kitchen bench and rests his head on his arms. He’s fading quickly, Dean’s got to get some calories in him, but he’s not sure _ what. _He knows Cas was a fan of microwave burritos the first go-round, but his stomach’s probably out of practice. Something a little gentler on the system might be smarter. 

A little digging around in the cabinets yields oatmeal. It’s not out of date, so Sam must have bought it (Dean certainly wouldn’t have thought to.) It’s not as good as a burger or a burrito, but it’s easy to digest, and if he spruces it up with a bit of milk and some maple syrup, all the better. He pauses, deciding whether or not to re-purpose a couple of Sam’s “do not touch” post-jog bananas, and ultimately goes for it. 

“You uh... feeling okay?” Sam asks Dean, when he wanders in and realizes what’s been prepared. If the banana-usage bothers him, he doesn’t say.

“He’s concerned about my digestion,” Cas says, words mildly slurred by drowsiness.

“Don’t--” Dean says to Sam, but it’s useless: The grin that takes over Sam’s entire face, sending his eyebrows into his hairline, is unstoppable. 

“You’re--”

“Don’t.”

“No, I just--”

“Sam--” Dean warns, but his protest is surface-level at most, and Sam’s stupid amused joy is infectious, Dean can’t resist it. 

“It’s just sweet, is all,” Sam says through a genuine laugh that makes Dean feel like he’s just had a spa day for the soul, like there’s a chance they can make things okay, somehow. 

“Yeah, well.” Dean glances over to Cas. “Eat up, the both of you. If we can all crash out for a few hours before Rowena gets here, we’ll be better off.”

It’s not bad, for oatmeal. Cas clearly loves it, but that’s no indication of whether it’s any good, he’s starving and hasn’t_ tasted _ anything but molecules in years. He’d probably react like that to practically anything. Still, Dean’s cheeks go pink at the praise regardless. Sam doesn’t say anything, but the quietly amused look on his face suggests he notices. 

Cas announces his intention to shower, and as soon he's out of probable earshot, Sam asks, “So, he’s _ actually _ alright?”

“He uh… _set the trap off now,_” Dean says by way of explanation. He doesn’t blame Sam for double-checking, he knows Cas has absorbed the bad Winchester habit of eliding reality when it comes to self-declarations of being okay.

“Huh,” Sam says at the sink, washing his empty bowl. 

“I had to... cut his wings off him, sort of.” The awkward symbolism doesn’t actually hit him until the words are out of his mouth. 

Sam doesn’t seem to know what to say to that at first, eventually settling on an oddly lighthearted, “Okay.”

“You’re not weirded out? By uh… y’know--”

“Me?” Sam sits back down at the bench in the kitchen, across from Dean. “No I’m _ super _ weirded out, are you kidding? Nothing has _ ever _been this weird, and for us that’s saying something, but not... whatever you wanna call what’s going on with you guys. That part seems, I don’t know, nice? It’s kind of a relief.”

“A what?”

“Well… Dean, c’mon, you’ve been dancing around each other for years,” Sam laughs, like it’s funny that he has to say something so obvious. “When I first noticed, I thought, perfect, he's not fragile, he understands the life, hell, he gets resurrected almost as often as you do, and he doesn’t take your shit. Might’ve taken awhile, but something’s clearly uh… resolved, here, and honestly it’s reassuring, knowing for sure_ I’m _not the only…” He stops, seemingly realizing he’s said too much.

“The only what?” Dean presses.

With a sigh, he finishes the sentence. “The only thing stopping you from floating off into space, half the time, in the... Milan Kundera sense. It’s a lot to put on someone, to make them your only tether to reality. I mean, I’ve been guilty of it too, in the past. It’s like with any kind of veteran, where no one else gets what you’ve been through. I realized that, way back when you were in purgatory, that’s why--”

“Whatever.” Dean pretends he doesn’t understand, or doesn’t care, for the simple reason that he _ does _understand and care, and is pretty much at his comfort limit.

Sam’s right, if he’s honest. Whether Dean dies, gets possessed, or just storms off, Sam increasingly makes shit work, he gets better at it every time. He goes to school, he gets a job, he finds a girl, he makes friends, he leads people. 

He lives.

What does Dean do, when the roles are reversed?

Shuts down and goes after Sam, every time, wanted or not. 

He’s not sure when Sam started taking care of _ him _instead of (or rather, alongside) the other way around. Maybe it’s been longer than he realizes. 

Dean changes the subject. “Tomorrow, you’re gonna explain all that computer stuff, right?”

“For some value of _ tomorrow, _yeah, sure,” Sam says, referencing the clock-and-sun situation. “After we sleep, I guess”

“Speaking of sleep, I uh…” Dean lets the air out of lungs. He doesn’t have any idea how to finish this sentence without sounding like a little kid scared to go to bed after a horror movie, so he just acknowledges it. “There’s no way this isn’t a weird thing to say, but what do you think about all… staying together, tonight, to sleep?”

“Yeah.” A little tension goes out of Sam’s shoulders. “I don’t think it’s so weird. I’m scared too. The stuff coming over the wire… Everything just seems...” He shakes his head, sighs and runs his hand through his hair, the way he does when he’s trying to self-soothe. “I didn’t want to say anything, ‘cause I thought maybe you two would want some privacy.”. 

“Right now?” Dean shakes his head. He huffs a little laugh. “Right now, for the first time in a long time, I actually _ miss _the motels. Wake up from a nightmare, look over, you’re snoring, that’s how I’d know everything was normal.”

Sam snorts. He feigns a scandalized tone. “Aw, Dean! You never said! I could have snored _ so _much louder, just for you! Could have even thrown a little drool in there!”

They both get a much needed laugh out of it.

The timeless night feels as if it’s _ their awareness _that’s holding the world up, and if the three of them rest, it’ll all just slip through their fingers. 

They can’t use the room they’d put Cas in, ‘cause the disembodied wings are taking up half of it, and neither of their bedrooms has the floor-space to work with. In the end, they push the two library tables Sam _ hasn’t _occupied out of the way and spread a few ancient Men of Letters sleeping bags out on the floor. Dean covers the whole mess with a couple clean blankets to protect them from the dust, and calls it good. 

When Cas emerges from an almost worryingly long shower, he takes no convincing at all to accept this arrangement. Some part of Dean had worried he’d find it silly or strange or uncomfortable, but he just nods along like it’s the most sensible thing the world.

Eventually the room is dark except for the little lights blinking green and blue and red from Sam’s gadgets, The three of them bed down together under an overlapping assortment of covers. Positioned between Sam and Cas, Dean butts one of his heels against Sam’s ankle like a low-tech motion sensor, and one hand is clasped together with Cas’. 

Only this way does he feel like he can safely sleep, but he does, indeed, sleep. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's the end of part one... next chapter, new section!


	5. Chrysalis | Chapter 1: Woven

  
[Soundtrack: I’ll Keep Coming, by Low Roar](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnrGMHhnqrw)

Part Two: Chrysalis | Chapter One: Woven

Buzzing rouses Dean from uneasy nonsense dreams -- Sam’s phone. He can tell by the pattern of the vibration. As he extracts himself from the ersatz nest, the buzzing stops, and then starts again. He scoops up the phone and sneaks into the kitchen and down the adjoining hall before he slides his thumb across the bottom of the screen to answer it.

“What?” He half-whispers into the mouthpiece. 

“Dean Winchester,” Rowena says, much louder. “This is the_ third _ time I’ve called, standing out here. D’ye mind opening the _ bloody door? _”

“Shit. One second. Are you safe?”

“What?”

“There’s nothing, I don’t know, _dangerous_ out there? You’re okay?”

“You haven’t _ been _out, I suppose? Locked in your fortress of solitude?”

“Just answer the damn question.”

“It’s not an _exit,_ _pursued by a bear _situation, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Great, then you can wait another minute." Dean hangs up before she has a chance to protest. 

When he passes back through the library, he flips on the light. “Alright, up and at ‘em, Rowena’s here.” He tosses Sam’s phone in his direction as soon as he begins to stir. 

Cas sits up, eyes red-rimmed and puffy (as if he had been crying, which is why Dean tactically pretends not to notice. Not like he doesn't have about a thousand good excuses, if so.) He pulls himself to his feet, not acknowledging either of them but rather wandering down the hall to the bathroom in silence. 

Sam, tidy and quick to reach full alertness, sets about rolling up the bedding and shoving the big ball of fabric into a corner. By the time they’ve got the tables back in their proper places, Cas (by far the bleariest) is returning to the library, a bit fresher of face. He still has that underlying stretchy looseness, though, that he's only ever had when he's been powered down or human. Dean has to fight his own tension in response: this is expected, this time. This is his choice. It's not an emergency to be managed.

“Clock’s back,” Sam says, then adds: “Sort of.”

“Sort of?” Dean shouts back, already up the stairs and opening the front door. 

“About _ bloody _ time!” Rowena hollers, no way of knowing she's stopped Sam's answer. She steps inside past Dean, who passes her in the other direction to get a better look at the state of the world outside. “So _ rude _! Leaving a woman standing on your dirty stoop all the live-long day--Ah, now you’re noticing, are you?”

When he’d first opened the door for her, the resulting faceful of daylight had soothed the corner of his mind clinging to the fear that the sun would never shine again. The relief was terribly short lived, (as is roughly usual, he thinks.) That fear thoroughly coiled again, tense as ever, because on closer examination, this is not_ any _ kind of daylight Dean’s ever seen. 

From inside, he hears a questioning sort of noise, and then Rowena saying, “Go stare at it yourselves, it’s right out there,” and then the sound of feet on the metal steps.

Dean steps a few more paces from the door. 

_ Huh. _

The world has changed, that much is certain. There’s a big ball of light in the sky, but Dean’s seen the sun more than enough to know that that’s no sun. It’s closer to a moon in appearance: pale, with a pure-white light, but it’s impossibly huge and low in the sky. 

Around the edges of where it’s too bright to get a good look at, Dean can see the rest of the world, trees and buildings and water, shimmering like hot air on a desert highway.

It’s pretty disorienting, he doesn’t really understand what he’s looking at, at first, but he turns his gaze toward where the horizon _ should _ be, and that begins to answer the question. The usual view, one with a flat horizon past which the world curves away, has been replaced by its opposite: one in which the space in the distance, seen through a haze, curves _ up _ instead, placing him and every other person on the _ inside _of a sphere, rather than the outside.

Somewhere past that big white globe above him, Dean realizes, is probably… what, China? Australia? Some random ocean? He’s not entirely clear on the details, but gets the gist: the world is _ literally _inside-out.

“When?” Dean calls to Rowena. He frowns, herding everyone back into the bunker and closing the door behind them. 

“Can’t really say, can I? What with the clocks and all. I was in Colorado, if it helps. Memory’s hazy around it, I’m afraid. Seems like I just blinked, and it just _ was _like that. At a guess, it was a few hours ago?”

“One hundred and sixty five... hours...” Sam reads the clock on his phone, just the hours first, and then adds the minutes: “...thirty three minutes.”

“And it’s counting down,” Rowena says. “_ That’s _ the eerie part, I’d say.”

Dean checks his own phone: the space where the clock would normally be reads exactly the same way. Well, thirty two minutes, now. 

Cas looks down at the display on his phone. His brows furrow for a moment, and then his hand crushes into a white-knuckled fist. His jaw works, and his lips vanish into an expression of tight fury. “That absolute motherfucker,” he says quietly.

All eyes are on him. 

“Do the math yourselves,” Cas practically spits. For a moment, he’s very obviously considering throwing the phone across the room, but elects not to, in the end. His arm goes slack instead, and, shaking his head, he storms out as if deeply offended by something only he could hear. 

“Oh, _ int _ ’resting” Rowena is the first to say, and both Dean and Sam turn to look at her instead. She explains: “It _ started _ from one hundred sixty _ eight _ … that’s seven days. Like... creation.” Then, after a brief silence: “Is someone getting me coffee? I’ve been driving for _ ever. _”

“Driving?” Sam freezes. 

“Well, how else did you think I’d get here? On a wee broomstick?”

“Actually…” Dean thinks about this. “Yeah, sort of, I mean, you don’t usually--”

“I’m cut off, alright!?” She throws up her hands and swans into one of the armchairs positioned among the library stacks. She looks at her own fingers theatrically, as if accusing them of betrayal. “Sort of. I’m not _ powerless _, not yet, but… I can feel it, sapping away. I was scared to waste it. And you'd be amazed how hard it is to get a cab when the world's ending.”

“I didn’t think that was how your powers _ worked, _” Sam says. He’s taken up residence in the chair his computer again, and every few moments he glances at it, adjusts something, types for a moment. 

The world is busy. 

“Aye, and you’d have been _ right, _ until today.” She rests her face on her hand, petulant and exhausted. “No heaven, no hell, _ very little _magic.”

No heaven -- Oh, shit -- they’d forgotten about contacting Naomi. 

“I’m gonna go check on Cas,” Dean says, scooping his phone off the table. “See if he can reach Naomi, or… any of those other ones.”

“Coffee!!!” Rowena calls after him. 

He hears Sam afterward, voice fading as he gets farther away, catching, “...wouldn’t expect him back for awhile, what with...”

As if Cas didn’t have enough grief already, they fail utterly to reach any other angel, by phone or by magic. The summoning spell nearly works, but ultimately sputters like a match in a room without enough oxygen. It brings them back to the library sooner than maybe Sam had anticipated. 

He doesn’t sound surprised by the news. “So,” Sam says, “Where are all the souls going?”

“Your uh… hunt-radar isn’t turning up ghosts anymore?” Dean gestures to the computer. 

“That’s just it… There was a flurry of ghost and demon activity before, and overall the reports of monsters are -- globally -- still way above normal. But now, it’s all living stuff only. Werewolves, vampires, that kind of thing. No ghosts, no zombies, no demons, nothing _dead_. They’re just... gone.” Sam beckons them over to the setup, where the left-hand monitor shows a chart that updates automatically with sightings. “We didn’t have this before, so the only basis for comparison is what everyone remembers, and data I pulled off the British Men of Letters, but, yeah. No demons, no ghosts.”

“I assume the light in the sky is somehow related,” Cas says. 

Rowena nods. “That tracks.”

Sam sends a message to the packed chat-room on the right monitor: _ Anybody see anything weird, taking out any monsters in the last few hours? _

Dean leans over Sam’s shoulder, watching in real-time as the replies come fast and furious. Variations on the same theme: all the downed monsters and humans alike produce a ball of light, that goes up and joins the big one. 

“No purgatory, either, then,” Dean concludes.

On the main screen, Sam’s got two windows, one above the other -- the top one shows a feed of major news station video, rotating between them, and the bottom is a text-only feed of headlines. The stock markets are closed, and people are reacting in all the ways people react to disaster: in some places, there’s looting and rioting, in others, relative orderliness, but all around, people are unmistakably _ reacting. _

He has to turn away when he sees something pop up about “doomsday preppers celebrating.” That just sets his teeth on edge.

The smooth and fragile eggshell of society is cracking. 

If this is distressing to folks already accustomed to the occasional apocalypse, he can only imagine what it’s like for the rest of the world. The last few times the world had a near-miss, there was a certain plausible deniability: climate change, eclipses, that kind of thing. 

Not this time. 

No one, not a single person with eyes and the ability to go outdoors today could possibly think the world is what it’s always seemed to be. 

  



	6. Chrysalis | Chapter 2: Imago

[Soundtrack: Dark Doo-Wop, by MS MR](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77ZwHQI3J40)

Part Two: Chrysalis | Chapter Two: Imago

**T-103:10**

There isn’t really anything to fight. 

Early on, Dean made a couple of abortive attempts to coax Sam into the car, to do _ something, _but Sam made the valid point that he’s doing a lot more to help and save people from that computer than he could possibly do by going out there. Then he suggested that he could strike out by himself, which got a resounding _ no _from everyone. He wasn't deterred by that, initially, but when Cas said (or rather demanded) he'd come along, that was the end of it -- he’s not putting a freshly re-human’ed Cas in the line of fire, even if it means sitting on his thumbs himself. 

Except he isn't sitting on his thumbs. There's plenty to do here, he's discovering.

Besides, no matter what mess the world is in, they still have the burning to do. It's taken this long just to get a moment that Sam can be dragged away from the monitors long enough to accomplish the task. Even Rowena stops short when she follows Dean into the-room-that-was-Cas', all her jokes and protestations silenced beneath the weight of two gigantic, dead, angel wings. Later, Dean will think about the look on her face, standing in the doorway, and he’ll pinpoint this moment as the one where it all sinks in for her, when she internally commits to being an honorary Winchester, to doing what little she can, here at the end of everything.

He wonders if she’s thinking about Crowley, about everything that he did, about his choices, his internal calculus, and the answers he found. 

They trudge up the hill that buries part of the building, carrying the wings together, and the four of them all work mostly in silence to build a workable pyre. There’s a sense of finality to it, that this truly is the_ last fall_ for Cas, and it isn’t only Dean that stands close, there’s a supportive cluster around him as they watch the fire burn. 

Cas insists on placing something of Jack’s in the fire too. The body was gone, when Chuck sent the night crashing down upon them, so they have little choice but to settle for a symbol of him. Dean what what Chuck might have done with the body, if he just blinked it out of existence, or what. 

When it’s all done, they return. 

Sam’s chat suggests that overall, the hunters on the front lines are actually having a rather interesting time out there. They don’t need fake IDs, now, or calls from their “FBI directors” -- no one needs any convincing to trust them and help them. No one doubts them, now that the hidden world is staring them in the face. 

What they _ do _need is access to artifacts and knowledge: silver bullets, angel blades, bronze knives, daggers dipped in various substances, stakes made from specific woods, the sort of items in abundance at the Men of Letters bunker and almost nowhere else. 

It’s Rowena to the rescue, on that count. The moment she comes to the conclusion that her power is getting weaker by the clock, not by the amount she uses, she has a moment of rage that at wasted time, and then, to her great credit, she rolls up her sleeves and gets to work. With the help of a few other natural witches (the only kind still in possession of any power at all) a kind of silk road is created. The tiny teleportation spots they make (her bangs stick to her face with sweat after awhile, it's a struggle) are not the kind of thing a living creature could safely pass through, but inanimate objects?_ That _they can manage. 

Dean and Cas, then, take up an entirely different kind of hunting. Gloved and dust-masked (to lower the odds of bumping into something cursed or otherwise problematic) they dive into the bunker storerooms, unearthing every weak-point weapon available. No sense in hoarding, anymore. At some point, they do, in fact, bring Rowena some coffee. 

Eventually the caffeine’s not enough, and Rowena sleeps. 

When Sam gets tired as well, Dean takes a turn at the nerve center. He’s not as good at it as Sam is, but he’s good enough to hold the line, at a bare minimum. He’s momentarily horrified to find out that Jody’s cabin is empty -- that they’re _ out there. _ Dean isn’t sure if wants to scold them, or join them, but every time he starts in on it being _ his _ fault, so _ he _should be out there, Cas gives him a look that glues him to his seat. 

In a quiet moment, Dean has a chance to chat briefly with someone who calls themselves Wren, and who turns out to be Sam’s co-administrator on the hunting group chat that’s been so instrumental. 

He discovers a few things about this person: they type _very _fast, they have a nerdy sense of humor darker than an oil slick, and they’ve only been hunting a few months. Apparently they went after a crocotta less than three days before the world ended. In the process, they jumped out a window and wound up with a compound leg fracture. Being laid up gives them little else to do but coordinate. _ I think I’m a lot better at this than I was at actually hunting, _they admit in one message. 

Dean agrees. He’s glad Sam’s got backup he can trust.

Cas answers phones. Human or not, he doesn’t seem to have lost a single iota of his millennia of knowledge, so he provides detailed information about nesting places and behavior and weaknesses and, in some of the more unpleasant circumstances, he provides what little comfort he’s able. 

It's difficult. Sam’s a born general, and Dean just can’t see himself that way. He would never dream of waking Sam for anything short of a screaming emergency, but when he wakes on his own and takes over again, Dean’s deeply relieved to retreat to the kitchen. 

They’ve been skating by awhile now on granola bars and Sam’s protein shakes (into which Dean pours whatever liquor he can find -- it’s disgusting, but effective.) Now, he digs up the ingredients for burgers, telling himself it’ll be good for morale. 

The big soul-ball in the sky brightens and dims at intervals no one can quite work out. There is day, and there is something vaguely resembling night in summer at the North Pole, but in the bunker, they’re insulated from it. They do what they have to, when it has to be done. They make their own hours. 

In a quiet moment, Cas corners Dean in a hallway and suggests that it’s been almost seventy hours since either of them showered, and nearly twenty since Cas has last slept (more like twenty six, for Dean) and how would Dean feel about remedying that, together?

The kiss with which Dean answers is nothing short of bruising. He pins Cas to that institutional-green wall and draws from him a sound that’s half groan, half exhausted laugh. 

“Now,” Cas rasps, “_ there _is the distraction I was hoping for.”

Dean frowns. “Distraction from what?”

“If we discuss it, there will be no distraction.” After seeing the comma between Dean’s eyebrows deepen, Cas adds, “Later. I Promise.”

“Yeah, well, I’m gonna hold you to that,” Dean says, tension shooting through his jaw and shoulders. All these years later, the visions Zachariah injected into his head still haunt him, a ghost he can’t burn. Now that Cas is human again, any little mannerisms and tendencies that resemble those visions make him jumpy.

He never told Cas what he’d seen -- not those parts, at least. Maybe he should. Maybe, if there’s something after zero, he can put that on the to-do list.

For now, Dean could frankly use a little distraction himself. They drag one another to the shower and use an amount of hot water that would be deeply unfair if the bunker had ever shown any limit where that was concerned, and then, couched in Dean’s memory foam mattress, they sleep an entangled, dreamless sleep for a few hours before waking and diving back into the rhythm of the work.

  
  
**T-42:02**

It’s Dean’s turn at the computer when he realizes what’s happening. By an odd coincidence of energy levels, he’s the only one awake. While he and Sam (and Wren, to some extent) have been sleeping in semi-coordinated shifts, they’re doing it discreetly, bothering neither Rowena nor Cas to sign onto the schedule. 

At the present moment, Rowena’s been passed out in an armchair for a couple of hours, bottle of whiskey still in her lap. Cas has been out for almost seven, and Sam’s been down for three. 

The library is quiet except for his typing. He’d thought to put on headphones and listen to music, but if Sam or Cas happen to shout for any reason, he doesn’t want them to have to do it twice.

They’ve settled oddly into a kind of non-routine routine. Sure, they can’t be out there, stabbing and shooting and throwing themselves directly in harm’s way, but Dean’s coming to see the value in this. 

A little under two days, he thinks, glancing at the lower right of the middle monitor. The bunker’s current residents speculate on what will happen at 00:00 with little more expertise than the rest of the world, and _ everyone, everywhere _is speculating. 

He’ll want to be awake for it. Sam, Cas, and Rowena probably will too, so that’s what, one more sleep? Maybe two short ones? 

Wren’s name pops up in the color Dean now thinks of as admin-yellow. Next to it, the message: _ Which Winchester do I have? _

It’s a waste of time to bother with logging in and out, and Dean’s never, ever going to use this thing for any other reason, so he’s just been speaking in Sam’s name half the time. He answers: _ Not the one you’re probably hoping for. _

Wren says: _ Where’s Sam? Something’s happening. _

The map on one screen is minimized, and so is the graph of sightings-by-hour, all shunted aside in favor of a large grid of videos -- helmet-cams and dash-cams and body-cams worn by hunters willing to share what they’re seeing with Sam and, sometimes, the world. With that narrow view, though, Dean can’t see the forest for the trees, and that’s probably why he didn’t catch on the way Wren has. 

He can sort of see it now, when he looks at them. The level of frenzy has gone down, is how he’d describe it, a sort of cooling effect. With what Wren said, he clicks on the map, and on the hastily-drawn-up crowdsourced sightings charts. There are two: One, with around eighty chosen and vetted editors, is considered the “experts chart” and another is open to the world of social media.

They’re both saying the same thing, proportionally, which is impressive. Three hours will have to be enough sleep for Sam for now.

“Sam,” Dean says softly, standing over his bed. When he doesn’t wake right away, Dean gives him a gentle shove. “Sam, sorry man, but you’re gonna wanna see--”

“Hey--” Sam’s quite rightfully disoriented for a moment, but gets his bearings fast. “Dean. What is it?”

“The monsters.”

“Yeah, what about ‘em?” He sits up, rubs his face and takes a deep breath. 

“They’re… gone.” Dean shrugs. 

A little crease appears on Sam’s forehead. “What?”

“I was watching the cameras, not the graphs,” Dean says, keeping his voice down so as not to wake Cas, resting on Dean's own memory foam mattress with the door open down the hall. “A few hours ago -- I guess it would have been right after you went to bed -- the sightings just…” 

Dean mimes a crash, with his hand. 

“Is everybody okay?” Sam frets.

“That was my first worry, too, that the sightings fell off because we were losing people, but no -- I got real quick responses when I checked in online. Almost all the editors were active less than thirty minutes ago, and there’s been no new deaths reported on the chat -- well, a few civilians, but no new hunters.”

Sam follows him back to the library to check everything himself, searching for a technical problem, a mistake Dean might have made, something that changed. 

He finds nothing. 

“So, what?” Sam's face is twisted with confusion and skepticism. “We… win?”

“If you scroll back through the posts here, it looks like some of the monsters are on our side now,” Dean points out. “The more… persuade-able ones, anyway.”

“That started… uh, around 20 hours ago, maybe a little more” Sam says, “That wouldn’t account for--I mean, honestly, it looks like…”

“Like the world ran out of hostile monsters,” Dean summarizes. 

“Yeah,” Sam says. 

“Never thought I’d see the day.”

They sit up together to watch the monitors after that, but it only settles further. A number of the cameras get turned off, many of the rest show little more than hunters driving quiet roads, going to wherever they consider home. 

Even Jody and Donna bring their little found family back to their hideaway. 

Rowena stirs, and Cas wanders out through the kitchen in bare feet in time to get the news. 

Around the world, in motels and cabins and safehouses, drinks are had, hugs are exchanged, and parties (of varying raucousness) begin to assemble. The messages in the chat grow sparse, lighthearted, and increasingly badly typed. Despite the surrounding conditions, this is something hunters, as a class, feel an _ obligation _ to celebrate.

And yet, the clock ticks on. 

  


**T-17:05**

“Go,” Rowena says, enunciating dramatically,_ “fffesh.” _

Cas glares daggers at her, but he does, in fact, take a card. He also takes a drink, in accordance with the rules of Drink And Go Fish, a game Dean invented, though he’s fairly certain he’s far from the first to come up with it. 

When Cas sees the card, though, his mouth twitches in a way that makes Dean want to lean over and kiss the corner of it. 

“I believe you would say I... fished my wish,” Cas says. 

So Rowena drinks deep of the mug in front of her. She mixed the drink herself, in the kitchen. Dean can smell the rum, what else he can smell, he’s not sure. 

Cas slides his last four cards together and drops them on the table, which means that everyone else has to drink. Cas wins this round.

“Damnit, Cas,” Sam says, but drinks. He’s been unlucky and he’s_ very _ drunk. “You won the last one, too. Are you sure you don’t still have some kinda--”

“Sam,” Dean warns. 

“Right. Anyway,” Sam politely changes the subject. He looks at the time and starts to collect the cards into a neat-ish pile. “It’s only around sixteen hours to go. We should all probably get a few hours of shuteye and sober up for whatever’s… whatever.”

They’ve all had enough to drink that it’s easy to fall asleep. Dean stretches out in bed, the first to walk away from that table, and by the time he feels the mattress sink next to him, he’s already most of the way out. 

He doesn’t dream. 

He's got a countdown timer set to wake him in several hours, but Dean wakes awhile before it, to the feeling of Cas shifting against him. When he stirs in response, Cas grumbles lightly, and opens his eyes. There’s an initial wince, against the sensory offense of being awake, but their eyes meet and Cas’ expression softens. 

“The memory foam really is an improvement on the other mattress,” Cas says, as if _that’s_ the reason he’s here. 

Dean lets himself linger in that moment for the space of a few breaths, still a little incredulous that this is even possible, before he reaches for his phone. 

Whatever happens at zero, he’d rather be clean for it than not, and he doesn’t argue when Cas trails into the shower after him -- they’re both too hungover to even think about much more than an _ actual _shower, but it’s pleasant company nevertheless. Dean rests his head on Cas’ shoulder under the falling water and Cas half-mindlessly runs his hands along Dean’s back. He closes his eyes and nearly falls back to sleep this way. 

He asks himself how long it’s been since he had the privilege of this kind of casual, vulnerable touch and realizes with alarm that the answer is essentially _ never, _ that the kind of relationships he’s had before just haven’t really supported it. There’s always been pressure to look a certain kind of way, to keep an image going, but now? Dropping the performance is how he _ got _here and he’s not giving that up for anything. 

Besides, they’ve already seen each other at pretty much every kind of worst Dean can think of. What’s left to hide?

Pajama-clad and damp-haired, they emerge into the common hallway. From the sound of the voices, he can tell that Sam and Rowena are both in the kitchen. 

He catches a snippet that makes him pause in his tracks, and put out a hand to stop Cas from proceeding as well. 

“...of magic, and it’ll be me on that pyre, before long.”

Sam’s voice is too low for Dean to make out his whole response, but he catches the words _ not gonna happen _ in there somewhere. 

Her anxiety is easy to understand, but with less than twelve hours to go, Dean thinks Sam is probably right. If the dearth of magic was going to kill her, there would probably be signs by now. It occurs to him then that what she’s worried about may well be what happens _ after _zero, but that’s such an enigma that it’s almost not even worth losing sleep over. It feels more like weather to Dean now, than a supernatural threat -- it will come, it will bring what it brings, and he might as well try to fight a hurricane. 

“Ah, the lovebirds emerge from the nest,” Rowena just about drawls as they enter the room, but there’s no sharp point to her barb. 

Dean’s nose crinkles as a wave of something powdery and sour hits it. “The hell’s that smell?”

“Goodness, Dean,” Rowena says, vaguely offended “I may be losing power but I’m not so far gone I can’t whip up a little hangover remedy.”

“And you’re _ drinking _ this _ literal witch’s brew? _” Dean asks Sam, astonished. 

Sam shrugs. “Doesn’t taste as bad as it smells.”

From behind him, Cas says, “I’ll try it.”

In the end, Dean is forced to admit that Sam was right. 

When Dean suggests they go for a drive and get some fresh air, Sam and Cas are on board straight away (if he can't do anything else, he knows what the people he cares about need) and while Rowena’s not as enthusiastic, she’s not against it either. 

The area around the bunker is quiet. There’s too many abandoned vehicles to get far on 281, so they take the back roads. Fields of corn and soybeans don’t seem to mind that the sun’s been replaced. 

A broad, grassy meadowland stretches flat and tranquil between farms, and Cas asks Dean to stop. 

“What, you want to have a picnic?” Dean says, glancing in the rear view mirror for a flicker of eye contact. 

“Yes,” says Cas, as if this is the most natural thing in the world. 

“Probably full of ticks,” Dean points out under his breath, but no one else seems to be against it, so he pulls the car over anyway. 

They don’t wander too far from the road before selecting a spot to sit. The air feels heavy and still, like a held breath. Sam unfolds a rough blanket he’d dug out of the trunk -- it’s badly stained and smells of gasoline but it suffices. Their picnic meal is some nearly-expired glove box snacks. 

And on the seventh day, they rested, Dean thinks. He keeps the thought to himself, Cas seems to be in good spirits and he’s not sure if that sort of crack might threaten the mood, given the earlier outburst.

The land is so flat, a person can see for miles. Dean squints into the distance where the world curls up toward them like the ribbon on a gift, like an old rolled-up parchment. He’ll never get used to this, he thinks, before remembering that in all likelihood, he won’t have to. 

Regardless of what a parody it is of any proper sort of picnic, Cas chews his knockoff cheez-its thoughtfully and smiles, one of those unpracticed, slightly off-kilter smiles Dean’s seen just a few times and which, he’s totally honest with himself, he would do almost anything to cause. He has no idea what’s causing this one, but he’ll take it anyway. 

Even Rowena relaxes eventually, finding the cleanest spot on the blanket to stretch out like a lazy cat. 

“T.S. Eliot called it, I suppose,” Rowena says, eyes half lidded against the waxing light above. “Not with a bang, but with a whimper.”

“We still don’t know that the world’s ending,” Sam counters. 

“Your optimism is a_ dor _able, Samuel.”

“It most likely is,” says Cas through a mouthful, though his tone is light and straightforward. “Ending, I mean.”

Dean’s still not sure what he thinks. 

Any argument fizzles before it starts, though, when Jody calls. 

There’s talk on the phones of Jody’s group driving down to the bunker, but the eventual conclusion is that it would take too long. Instead, once they’re back home, Dean and Sam drag some more seating into the Dean-Cave and hook one of the computers to the television. In this way, they can hang around on video chat as the clock ticks down. 

Claire notices Cas’ hand discreetly clasped with Dean’s at one point and makes a joke threaded through with affection about how “it’s just like you idiots to wait until the world’s ending to finally communicate.” 

“Hey! Nice catch!” Jody praises Claire’s eagle eyes, and then, to Dean and Cas, she says, “better late than never, am I right?”

No one is even the_ slightest _ bit surprised, which is the _ real _joke, as far as Dean is concerned.

When the conversation settles, they don’t actually hang up. Instead, they go about their business on both ends of the line -- cooking, drinking, reading, tapping away on phones and laptops, making calls, wandering to other rooms and returning, all in a companionable quiet not unlike if they _ were _all there together.

As far as anyone can tell, it seems like this mood is echoed around the world. In the places where there was violence, it’s largely died down. Shops sit open and empty of staff, and offices go dark. 

Of all the ways that Dean has died, he’s pretty sure he's never drowned, but he’s heard stories about it. What he’s heard is this: that there’s an initial panic as carbon dioxide builds up and the lungs fight for air, but shortly before actual death, the drowning person feels a wave of calm. 

It seems to him that the entire planet is experiencing something like that. 

No one says goodbye, or makes any speeches, but as the dregs of time drain away like bathwater, they all draw in close to one another to greet whatever comes.


	7. 0͎͈̲͎͇͕̲̟̬̭̘̋́ͨ͆̓ͩͤ͜͝0̊ͫ̔̽͆̂ͮ̾͒̓ͯ̈́҉͏̻͚̟̮̠̯͓̫̩:ͮͬ́̕҉͎̼̯͕͇̬̠̻̲̮͕͔͍̻̦̟ͅ0̸̧̼̠̖̯̭̭̹̫̜̋̆ͤͦͬ̋ͫ̅ͅ0̸̥̗͕̼͎͍̭̖̗͇ͦͭͨͨͨͧ̓̌́ͤ̇̔ͤͭ͑͘

**0͎͈̲͎͇͕̲̟̬̭̘̋́ͨ͆̓ͩͤ͜͝0̊ͫ̔̽͆̂ͮ̾͒̓ͯ̈́҉͏̻͚̟̮̠̯͓̫̩:ͮͬ́̕҉͎̼̯͕͇̬̠̻̲̮͕͔͍̻̦̟ͅ0̸̧̼̠̖̯̭̭̹̫̜̋̆ͤͦͬ̋ͫ̅ͅ0̸̥̗͕̼͎͍̭̖̗͇ͦͭͨͨͨͧ̓̌́ͤ̇̔ͤͭ͑͘**

  
  
  


“You're death,” Jack says to Billie.

“That's complicated,” she says. 

A long, pale hand comes to rest softly on her shoulder. Jack’s gaze shifts to the right, to the man (sort of) it belongs to. He isn’t that tall, not in comparison to the company Jack usually keeps, he's even hunched, just a little, but something about him  _ feels  _ tall. He seems stretched over himself, as if he’ll radiate and spill outward in every direction at any moment. 

Jack can see his face, but it makes him uneasy, so he focuses on the face that Death shows him instead. It is kinder, more human. 

“It’s alright,” says Death to Billie. “I’m here. You’ve done well, and I sincerely appreciate all of your assistance.” 

She nods. The expression on her face is pure relief. She fades away, into the dark.

He turns the beam of his attention on Jack. “Hello, Jack. I’m afraid it’s past your bedtime.”

Jack only indulges a few moments of eye contact before breaking it, looking around the nothing, considering his words carefully. “I understand what you're saying, but I can’t go to sleep.”

“And why is that?” Death turns his hand, and a plush chair appears. He lowers himself into it with care, as though it is fragile. 

With another turn, a chair appears for Jack, and he sits gingerly in it. 

“Do you know why I’m here?” Death asks. 

He doesn’t, and then he does, because he looks for it. “You’re here to reap the empty.”

“That’s right.”

“Sam told me that he and Dean killed you.”

A little smile shifts Death’s expression, for a passing moment. “Yes, I suppose they _would _say that. Tell me, Jack, if you break a rock in half, have you killed the rock?”

"No, because... oh. I see." Rocks aren't alive to start with, Jack doesn't say, because it's a little too obvious.

"Let's just say that Sam and Dean gave me a good reason to take a holiday from Earth for awhile."

“I understand,” Jack says, because he does. “And you came back, because Billie can’t do... this.”

“Indeed. She, and all the other reapers, are to be among the reaped.”

Silence falls between them for an undetermined time. Jack casts about for understanding, and he finds it. 

“I’m not dead, am I? Not really. No one is, here.”

“Yes and no,” says Death. There’s a distant sense of irritation at that, a minute ripple in the surface of still water. He speaks as if urgency is a foreign concept. “It’s more like… cold storage. Eons ago, I came to reap the first angel who died, on the first world  _ he  _ ever made. He did not want to allow it. He wanted to bring the angel _back._ I told him that to everything there is a season. He said,  _ not to them.” _

“And then?”

“I permitted a compromise, so that he could write his little stories. Certain things would wait, dormant, until the end of the world they were attached to, until he didn’t need them anymore. And then I would come, to reap them. Properly.”

Jack considers this. “Is that why the empty has no face? Because Chuck is gone. But I thought Chuck had no power here?"

“Just so,” Death affirms. “He's always spread the rumors of what he would prefer people to believe. That does not make it the truth. This  _ place  _ has always been, independent of him, but that  _ avatar  _ was a kind of... security system, originally meant to prevent me from visiting before he was ready for me. You and Castiel  _ really _ tripped the alarm, didn’t you?”

“Can’t you just send me back, before you do it?”

Death looks out into the nothing. He drums his fingers slowly on the arm of the chair. “You are  _ their  _ child, truly.”

“I don’t mean any offense,” Jack says, courteous but firm. “It’s only that, well, you’re right. I am.” 

“Their world is over. There won’t be anything to go back  _ to _ .”

“And it… has to be that way?”

Death makes a small gesture, and they are standing again. “Ah. I hoped you might ask. Would you like to see it? The world, as it is now?”

“Yes, sir.”

When Death lets go of his cane, it does not fall. He places his hands before him, as if holding a sphere by the poles, and one appears between them. 

At first, Jack has a hard time understanding what he’s looking at. The wall of the bubble is clear, but within it, brown and green growths extend slightly inward. There is a second ball, floating at its center, glowing with a bright white light.

“That... doesn’t look like Earth,” says Jack. 

“That,” Death makes a small gesture with his head, “is a _natal_ world.” 

Jack searches Death’s face for answers. 

Recognizing this, Death continues: “When a human lives, what is _not_ human, but still lives abundantly within?”

“Bacteria," says Jack, brows furrowed but a bit proud to have the answer to the riddle. 

“When a human dies, it is as if the whole world of those bacteria has perished, wouldn’t you say?” Death says. “Life, and death, and sometimes rebirth, are present at every scale, from the smallest microscopic thing to the greatest celestial one.”

“Rebirth!” Jack seizes upon the word. “Rebirth can happen, right? So, who decides what happens next?” Jack reaches close to the sphere, but does not touch it. 

“That, young man, is why I am going to the trouble to explain all this to you in the first place. Every soul that has ever perished here is assembled at its core. When a world dies, it may become extinct, or, if the souls at the core burn brightly enough, their combined creative power will make it possible for that world to be reborn, in one way or another.  This particular petulant, irritating god, in his  _ temper tantrum-- _ ” Death rolls his eyes, “Has hastened the cycle of his planet. He has ended it, prematurely.”

“To everything there is a season,” Jack repeats what he’d heard, finding it relevant.

“He never seemed to understand.”

“So, why  _ are  _ you telling me?”

“Because in its present state, the fate of this natal world rests on the edge of a knife. I suppose I cannot help but wonder, given your power, given the somewhat unique thing that you are, your influences... if I told you it was possible, in what direction would  _ you  _ push it?”

Death shifts the sphere so that he may hold it balanced on a single palm. He offers the other hand to Jack, who places his hand in Death’s.

There is a forest before him, and he stands in a clearing at the end of a path, but even as he stands, new paths open up around him, stretching and winding into the trees. He cannot see where they go, but he can  _ feel  _ them. 

Down one road, the world is reaped. The souls in the core return to the fabric of the universe. Its particles spread out into infinity, eventually becoming tiny parts of new things, like a corpse dissolving into the ground and plants growing slowly above on the nutrients it puts into the soil. It is not terrible, as Jack at first imagined. There is beauty and peace, there. It wouldn’t be so bad, if it went this way.

On a different path, the world is reborn from its own beginning, dust and rock arcing around one another, curling through space, crashing together into a wild molten sphere in an idyllic location for some sort of life to one day grow. It is pregnant with magic and energy. There is potential here, an enormous, glittering new destiny.

Down a third, the world is remade precisely as it was, as though nothing had happened in that cemetery at all. The shadow of a hand is cast upon its surface. Chuck’s influence remains -- and while his punishment is negated, and while Jack’s power offers much good he could do there as a competing god, there is nothing to stop Chuck from returning to toy with it, with them. 

He turns quickly away from the temptation of it.

Still another way calls. Its voice is quiet and far away, and he must strain to hear it. He listens carefully.

Yes, this is the one. 

He opens his eyes.

“Are you certain?” Death asks. 

Jack understands why Death must ask, must confirm this. He understands the weight of this choice, that it takes the world to a place from which it cannot ever return. It is also a place, however, where neither Chuck nor anything like him can ever touch them again. 

“Yes,” says Jack. 

“Fascinating,” says Death, and he does smile, then. “Pity, I hoped we would meet again.”

Death places Jack’s hand upon the top of the sphere. 


	8. Natural | Chapter 1: Spring

[Soundtrack: Our Beginning, by Atlus Sound Team](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Y3ZgOIx2-k)

Part Three: Natural | Chapter One: Spring

Dean opens his eyes and sees nothing. A moment ago, he’s sure he was in an armchair, clustered together with Sam and Cas and Rowena in front of a webcam that connected them with those they couldn’t be_ physically_ close to. They’d all sort of braced and held their breath, and then--

He’s horizontal, laid out like a corpse in his own bed (he’d know that memory foam anywhere) _ on top _ of the blankets, fully dressed complete with boots. 

Last time he woke up like this, he had black eyes.

“Sam?” He says to the dark, but gets no answer. He has no better luck with calling gently for Cas, or Rowena. He’s about to start shouting, but there’s one or two more things he’d like to try first, for example: light.

He fumbles around the bed until he finds his phone. Before he even has a chance to switch on the flashlight, he sees the time:

8:37 AM.

AM! He never thought he'd be so pleased to see those two little letters.

His fingers actually shake a little when he swipes through to a version of the clock that has seconds on it, but when he gets there, sure enough, the time is counting _up_, ticking forward the way it always has. 

Well, almost always, anyway. 

The LED flashlight on the back of the phone gives him two important bits of information: he is most certainly in his bedroom, and he is alone. 

He fumbles his way to the door and flicks the light-switch, but nothing happens, and when he opens the door, there’s no light in the hallway either, not even the backups. In the harsh, dim glow cast by the phone, the space seems tight and foreboding, like the corridors of a sinking ship. 

_ Now _he can start shouting. 

“Sam!” He hollers down the hall. 

Another door clicks open, and: “Dean!” Sam’s voice comes down the hall, forcing open the grip of the cold fingers of fear in his chest, allowing him to breathe again. A light not unlike Dean’s own emerges, bobbing and sweeping, into the hall, with the unmistakable shape of Sam behind it. 

“Power’s out,” says Sam.

“No shit,” Dean answers. He shouts again, making Sam flinch-- “Cas!?” and then, “Rowena!”

“Dean?” There’s a thump behind another door, and then it opens. Cas doesn’t have a light, maybe. He probably stubbed his toe or something. The door opens and Cas stumbles into the hall. 

“Cas, you’re okay, we got you, we’re right here.” Dean blinds him with his flashlight for a moment. 

Cas squints, and his face registers where he is, and that Sam and Dean are indeed standing before him. His eyes darken under the shadow of a furrowed brow. “Where’s Rowena?”

There was some way for Dean to guess where Sam and Cas would be, once he identified his own situation. If they hadn’t emerged into the hall, he’d have gone into those rooms and found them there. 

Rowena, though, doesn’t really have a room anyone thinks of as being _ hers. _ For the last week Dean’s not even sure he’s seen her go off to lie down -- he’s seen her drift off in any number of chairs (like someone’s grandma) and he knows she must have put her carpet bag _ somewhere, _and she’s been changing clothes, she must have picked out a room to do that, but now that he thinks about it, he’s got no clue where that might be. 

“Rowena!?” Dean calls out in one direction, and Sam echoes it in the other. 

A cold weight settles in his stomach.

_ ...be me on that pyre soon enough... _

“You don’t think--” Dean swallows.

In the flashlight glow, he can see Sam’s jaw work. “I don’t know. Her magic was fading, she said… she said if it was completely gone, she wasn’t sure if she’d survive, since that’s what’s kept her alive all this time.”

“Alright. Sam, you check down in storage, Cas, you go down the hall, that way, to the other bedrooms and the Dean-Cave, I’ll go out to the war room and see if I can get the power on, check the kitchen and the library while I’m at it.”

Cas dips back into his room. He figures out how to use the phone light easily enough.

Splitting up is inherently sketchy, that knowledge is like a bad smell in the air, but they’re in the bunker for chrissake, a place that Sam and Dean, at least, both know like the backs of their hands by now. The “Fort Knox” of magic, Dean reassures himself, feeling odd about it the whole time, like he’s that guy calling the Titanic unsinkable.

“No one do anything stupid,” Dean says. “You see her, you shout. You see nothing, meet back in the kitchen. You see anything dangerous, or weird, or different, you get the hell out of there, make lots of noise, and don’t engage until you got backup. All clear?”

Sam and Cas both nod. 

“No risks, no heroics,” Dean reiterates as they split. 

Dean stays low and springy as he moves, ready to fight or to dodge or to run, heart rattling. In the kitchen, he tries the sink, but nothing happens. Not only does it not produce water, he can’t even hear pipes or pumps _ trying _to produce it. It might as well be on display at a hardware store.

He flips all the same switches that had gotten the lights on in the past, but they don’t do anything this time. He’s just started looking around for another option when he hears Cas’ voice down some distant hall and he takes off running.

By the time he gets there, Sam’s already on the scene, right outside the doorway to the Dean-cave. 

“I’m _ fine, _” Rowena is assuring both of them “--Ah, and here’s the other one-- I was merely disoriented.”

“I found her in one of the recliners,” Cas explains.

“And your magic?” Sam asks, all urgency.

“Gone the way of the dodo, I’m afraid,” she says through a resigned sigh. “Couldn’t even muster a bit of light to see by. Embarrassing, is what it is.”

“Yeah, well,” Dean grunts, “you’re alive, so that’s something.”

“I’m as surprised as you,” she admits.

“Alright,” Dean says, taking charge again. “Let’s get outside. We’re not getting anything done down here.”

The bunker, so homey before this, now seems about as friendly and hospitable as a cave on the moon, so no one argues with this. Dean takes point on the trip up the stairs, with Sam bringing up the rear of the group. Experience has taught Dean that Cas is still fairly competent, even as a human, but if he’s honest with himself, it’s Sam in whose hands he feels most comfortable putting the lives of others. Always has been. 

Four sets of footsteps echo on the metal stairs, and they crowd around the door on the mezzanine. Sam shifts forward to pull it open, and they all hold their breath.

Dean has to blink against the sunlight (real, warm sunlight!) a few times before his eyes adjust enough to identify the slim figure sitting on the concrete steps outside.

“Hello!” says Jack, getting to his feet. “I couldn’t get inside, and I don’t have a phone, so I decided to wait here.”

Evidently, Cas has no doubt whatsoever that he’s really who he looks to be, because he jostles past everyone and gathers Jack into a crushing, almost _ violent _hug.

It’s the best punch in the chest Dean could imagine. 

Everyone’s talking over one another all at once, and Dean steps away. Cell service is much better out here than it had been inside, so he makes a call. 

“Dean?” Asks Donna’s voice on the other end of the line. 

“The one and only,” answers Dean. 

“OH, thank goodness--”

“Everyone okay on your end?”

“More or less. Some folks woke up in weird places, but--well how ‘bout you all?”

“We’re okay. Everyone’s okay. Jack’s back. We lost power, but--”

“You did?”

“Yeah. You didn’t?”

“Nope,” says Donna, “honestly, it’s… normal. Almost too normal, after all’a that kerfuffle. Kinda eerie, you know?”

They go over it, confirming that their memories are the same, and Donna puts the phone on speaker, asks Jody, and the kids, everyone’s got the same story they do, minus the power outage. 

Dean puts his end on speaker too, as Sam’s wandering over with open interest in the conversation. With everyone’s seeming good health established, they hang up to let Donna and Jody get to their actual jobs, which need them more than ever as normalcy tries to reassert itself. 

There’s a group venture backs into the depths of the bunker to the garage, so that they can all gather a few belongings and pile into the car. The first two diners they find are still dark and empty, but the third is open for business. 

As they file in through the unlocked door, a large man in an apron (almost as tall as Sam, Dean notes, but with a lot more weight on him) wanders out from the back and warns them he’s the only one here for the moment, but he’s got a couple of others on the way in half an hour or so, and can he get them a coffee in the meantime while he gets all the appliances up and running?

Cas, Rowena, and Jack all squish a little to fit into one side of the booth, and Dean lets Sam get in first on their side. 

Dean thanks the man for being open at all, which the guy (“Rob,” reads his name tag) dismisses with a shrug. 

“Strange times,” says Rob says, as he pours five coffees. “But hey, I worked last year in the blizzard, I worked when a tornado came through, I was workin’ last week right up until all the clocks said zero. Woke up on the ol’ army surplus cot I got in the back room for late nights, figured I might as well work today, too. First day of the rest of… something. What's it they say? Begin as you mean to go on?”

“You’re very dedicated!” Jack says, adding packet after packet of sugar to the coffee in front of him. 

“Does that thing get the news?” Sam points to the tube TV suspended from the ceiling in the corner. 

Rob nods. “Sure does -- that’s not a half bad idea, see how things are going everywhere else. You folks seem like you came out alright at least.”

“Still got ten fingers and ten toes,” Dean affirms.

“Well, praise the lord for that, Rob says, to which Dean smiles and nods despite his total lack of intention to do anything of the sort. After Rob turns on the television, he disappears into the back of the diner. 

Once they’re alone, he settles down to pick Jack’s brain, but it turns out there’s little to pick. 

“I don’t remember,” is his answer to almost everything. He remembers being in the Empty, and then he remembers standing outside the bunker in the sun. There is a certain hazy feeling, he reports, of something weighty and serious occurring in the deep, dark nothing of the Empty, but there are no specifics. 

There is only one clue: a crumpled piece of paper in his pocket with a note, handwritten:

YOU WOULD HAVE MADE AN EXCELLENT GOD.

INSTEAD, YOU MUST TRY TO BE A GOOD MAN.

IT WILL BE HARDER.

No one, including Jack, knows who it’s from. 

“What about your powers?” Cas asks. “And your… soul?”

“I’m… human,” he answers after a brief pause, as if doing some kind of internal diagnostic to arrive at this conclusion. “As for the soul, I… don’t know.”

Jack places a hand on his sternum, as if he’d be able to feel it like a heart.

Sam probes. “You hungry? Tired? Think you could sleep, if you tried?”

“Yes, to all of those things,” Jack says, which is a good sign. 

“Would you step on a kitten for a chocolate bar?” Sam asks, achingly direct.

“Definitely not,” Jack says, eyes unfocused as he imagines scenarios with a frown. 

“He’s probably fine,” Sam says. 

“Good to have you back, kid, however it happened,” Dean acknowledges. 

Cas asks, “How do you_ feel?_”

At this, Jack’s face changes completely. He _ beams_, it’s a smile that could power a small town. “I’m… happy. Really happy."

"You're not angry, or--"

"About... before? No. I..." Jack looks around the diner, looks at Dean, and then Sam, and then Dean again, and then back to the laminate tabletop. "It feels like a bad dream, or like something that happened to someone else. This is a new chance, I know that much. Though, I think I will still need some help, learning how to be a human.” A wisp of concern crosses his features. “And… you?”

All eyes are on Cas. Under the table, despite all the legs crowded together, Cas foot finds Dean’s unerringly and brushes against it, an innocent bid for connection. Dean wiggles his toes in his boot, just enough for the touch to register.

“I feel precisely the same,” Cas says, with a smile that seems almost surprised at itself. 

“I suppose I’m going to have a few lessons to learn myself,” Rowena admits, looking less pleased and more like she could use some bourbon in her coffee. “I’ve used magic for… everything, for _ centuries. _”

Dean raises his mug. “A toast, to the incoming class of the Sam and Dean Winchester School of Being Human.”

They toast, they laugh, and they drink their coffee.

The whole time, Sam’s had one eye on the news. It’s largely good, as near as they can tell: the few things that were broken are being rebuilt, people are going back to work, overall a startlingly little amount of harm seems to have been done, at least compared to what anyone would expect. The news anchors have psychologists and scientists on the air, trying to explain the “mass hallucination” possibly caused by “unusual frequencies from outer space.”

It isn’t the only theory that will get bandied about (it competes with drug warfare gone wrong, terrorist mind control signals, deliberate attack by aliens, and other things dreamed up in the creative mind of the world) but it remains the most popular. 

When the diner’s finally ready for full function, they get a wonderfully greasy breakfast. Jack discovers a deep and true love for hash browns, and Rowena sighs, making a sidelong comment about how she’s going to have to watch her figure the old fashioned way, but she tries to steal some of Cas’ bacon regardless. 

Sam spends considerable time watching his phone, calling out the comments and messages he’s seeing from everyone he’s been in contact with in the past week. Wren’s got a compilation document keeping track, and one theme keeps coming up: 

A complete and utter dearth of magic.

The typically-monstrous things that waved the white flag in the days prior are all reporting waking up _ human, _ which is the first and most dramatic sign _ . _Videos are being uploaded to the chat of folks who were werewolves yesterday cutting their skin with silver knives, vampires poking at their gums and finding no fangs, and natural witches doing spells they’ve done a thousand times, without even the slightest hint of any result. 

“You remember that time we got booted to that other world? The one where we were actors?” Sam recalls. 

“You think this is like that?” Cas muses.

“I don’t know, I’m just saying, there was no magic _ there, _not really, so who’s to say it’s not something similar, now? It’d explain the blackout at the bunker. I’m pretty sure the place was run by magic. I'd be surprised if the pipes even go anywhere.”

The idea settles a blanket of quiet over the table. 

Dean tips generously at the end of the meal. There’s a trip to a hardware store for the highest power flashlights they can get their hands on, and they go spelunking in the bunker. In the light of lanterns and head-lamps, and because science requires replication, Sam does a few experiments. They’re spells that anyone could do, that always yielded results, and now, nothing, not even a flicker.

Cas digs the curse box out from under his bed, where the grace had been, but when he opens it, it’s dark. There’s feathers in it still, but size aside, they’re indistinguishable from any bird’s. Still, he puts the box of feathers in his new duffel bag. 

They’re in the middle of packing the few things they actually care enough to transport to their chosen motel when Dean makes the joke:

“Who wants to start pawning stuff?” 

But Rowena takes him seriously, and it’s not long before they do a little investigation.

He goes into it assuming they’ll mostly find garbage, but between Cas’ expertise, Rowena’s, and Sam’s, there’s enough in the “potential moneymaker” pile (either due to physical material, or due to possible historical significance) that they have to send Dean out to rent a van (hideous and taupe-colored, but Cas likes it for some reason) to transport it all. 

They’re busy, after that. 

Rowena and Cas and Jack might be devoid of their usual sources of strength, but Dean -- and Sam alongside him -- has spent his whole life scraping and hustling the way they do now. It’s almost fun. 

They’re slick and convincing on the phone and in offices full of bored government workers, and they pick a state where they have connections to help grease the wheels. Cas asks Claire’s permission for Jack to use the Novak name (to which she says _ yeah, whatever, like it matters _but there’s affection bare on her face) and before long, he has real, actual government-issued identification. 

“No middle name,” Dean points out. 

“Do we need them?” Jack asks, admiring his brand-new non-driver ID. 

“I’m fairly certain they’re optional,” Cas assures, looking at James Novak's now-renewed license. "I look _terrible _in this photo."

Dean leans over, takes one look at it, and splutters with laughter. When Cas narrows his eyes in a glare, Dean says, “Re_lax_, it’s an ID photo. Everyone looks bad in ID photos.”

“Jack’s is fine.”

“_Jack’s _ looks like he’s trying to blow up the camera with his mind,” Dean corrects, but all this accomplishes is to get _ both _ of them annoyed with him. He mollifies them by showing them his own license, his real one, which everyone agrees is terrible. 

After Sam checks them out of the motel, they stand in the parking lot under the warm spring sun, surrounded by short suburban trees with buds just starting to open, and they are struck by the question: what do you do, when you don’t have to save the world?


	9. Natural | Chapter 2: Summer

Soundtrack: [Highway Vagabonds, by Miranda Lambert](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0ldOvJZkRc)

Part Three: Natural | Chapter Two: Summer

It’s not a big surprise that there is a meandering sort of road trip. 

It starts when Dean sells a dagger (beautiful, with several big fuckoff gems in the hilt, previously-but-no-longer _ very _cursed) to a personal collector for an amount of money he’s not sure he’s ever seen in one place like this before. He gets back from the sale and announces that they’re going to the damn Grand Canyon, and he’ll brook no argument. 

Not that anyone even tries to argue, having little better to do.

The following night, the five of them land at a bed and breakfast in Boulder. The place is meticulously adorable to the point of being saccharine, and is empty aside from themselves, which allows them to take it over like it's briefly theirs. Sam must hear the call of his moose-y kin, Dean supposes, because for whatever reason, he seems absolutely _ desperate _ to hike. He keeps pointing out nature trails and day-hikes, but none of them seem to be hiding a reason to bring a machete. 

It’s not as if Dean doesn’t like a little peace and quiet away from people, but every spot Sam points to just seems a bit sanitized. If _ Dean’s _ going to go out in the woods, it’ll be off the beaten path, and with a _ purpose _ . He wonders idly if maybe taking up _ regular _hunting might be worth a try.

Cas and Jack, on the other hand, are both completely seduced by the glossy brochure photos of smiling people on sun-dappled mountainsides. (The fact that Jack’s _ not _ Cas’ _ actual _kid gets harder and harder to believe by the day.) 

In any case, it isn’t as if they have to hurry. 

The Grand Canyon will still be there even if they stay an extra day in Colorado.

The tree-huggers wind up taking the car out the trailhead at dawn which leaves behind Dean and Rowena (Rowena, whose response to the notion of a hike was a dramatic laugh followed by _ oh, you weren’t joking. No.) _

Given that neither of them are all that thrilled about forests or farmers markets, they both sleep in until it gets a bit ridiculous to sleep in any longer, and eventually find themselves out on the back deck of the bed and breakfast, at a bit of an impasse for how to spend a car-less afternoon in hippie-ville until their companions return.

“Well… When in Rome,” Rowena says sweetly, canting her head but otherwise not looking up from a green-spangled complimentary issue of _ Boulder Weekly. _

Dean leans forward, elbows on the wrought iron table. “You can’t possibly be suggesting--”

“I know, I’m_ terrible _influence,” She says, smirking with her entire body. “Been awhile, I take it?”

“Geez.” Dean rubs his face as he thinks. “I wanna say… coupla decades? It was a whole ’nother thing back then. Claire tells me the kids don’t even_ smoke _now, they got electronic… pen things, and...” He waves his hand dismissively and hides his alarm at how much he sounded like his father just there. 

“Now don’t start _ that _ with _ me,” _Rowena chides. 

“All I can think about is what an asshole I’d look like walking into one of those places,” Dean says of the sleek dispensaries they drove past on the way in. 

Then again, his original nascent plan had involved a lot of alcohol and television, but he can do that anywhere. If he’s going to be intoxicated and unproductive anyway, there’s no harm in a little local novelty. 

A quick interaction with google maps later, it becomes apparent that they won’t even need to call a cab -- there’s a place within walking distance, because it’s Boulder, of course there is. Dean mostly lets Rowena do all the talking while he stands around and tries to look less like he's in his forties.

What they end up bringing back does not smell _ anything _ like the shit he got his hide tanned for being caught with back in the day, and it doesn’t take him very long at all to realize just how right he was about it being _ a whole ’nother thing. _

As the edges of everything soften, Dean wonders for a moment if this is what it looks like to toe up to the border of mid-life crisis territory. Then he wonders what exactly counts as mid-life for him, given his original life expectancy combined with the years in hell… that’s math he doesn’t really know how to do. 

Before he realizes it, the sun begins to creep down closer to the wobbling line of the mountains and the sharpened pencil tips of the pines. The view of the little patch of woods behind the property has provided pretty much all the entertainment the two of them have needed. They’ve been riveted by The Battle of the Birdfeeder, delighted at the antics of a rabbit at the treeline, and vaguely moved by the silent passage of a doe and fawn through the leaf litter. It’s like _ Planet Earth _ without the narration. 

Rowena’s in the other deck chair, looking a bit lost in thought, fingers tapping along the wide wooden armrest to the guitar solo of _ Ramble On, _as it floats from Dean’s phone. 

“D’you know, I don’t know my own birthday,” Rowena finally says. 

“That _ is _ sad,” Dean says, but he’s still smiling. He starts to chuckle when he says, “You know, _ today _ could be your birthday. There’s a one in… one in three-hundred-n-sixty-five chance, so… Happy Maybe Birthday.” 

“Well aren’t you just sweet.”

Sweet. There’s an idea. He doesn’t tell her, but he sends a text message to Sam that only says _buy cake! _He’s pretty sure Sam’ll do it, too.

The song that comes on after that, or maybe _ several _ songs after that, going by the state of the painted sunset, is _ Shambala, _which perks her up. “Oh, I love this one!”

“Three Dog Night? You!?” Dean laughs. 

“What’dya mean with that ‘_ you?!’ _ What were you _ thinking _ I listened to, Gregorian chanting?”

Then she’s singing along, terribly, and so is Dean, and that’s how Sam and Cas and Jack find them, out on the back deck in the lavender twilight, making a set of noises with only a passing resemblance to music.

“Sam!!” Dean calls over the ending of the song. He catches sight of the plastic shell in Sam’s hands. “Hey! You got Rowena’s birthday cake!”

“Birthday?” Cas frowns and looks at Sam as though trying to tease out secreted information, but Sam only shrugs.

“Maybe!” Rowena cackles, sounding _ very much _ like a witch again for a moment. Through high pitched laughter, her voice squeaks when she says, as if it is the funniest joke in the world, “I doubt you’ll have brought anywhere _ near _ enough candles!” 

Sam looks down at the cake in his hands, then at Rowena, and at Dean, and at the table, and he visibly puts the pieces of the puzzle together. “They’re stoned,” he concludes out loud.

“Ding ding ding!” Rowena applauds. “Tell the wee giant boy what he’s won!”

“Hey, that’s my line,” Dean protests, “_ You’re _ the one who dresses like Vanna White.” 

Sam interjects, “Did you at least bring enough for the whole class?”

“What do you_ take _me for? ‘Course I did, gather round, gather round,” Rowena beckons.

There’s a recap of the hike woven among Sam’s instructions to Cas and Jack (and truly, only Sam could make getting high sound like some kind of flight attendant safety presentation) to which Dean pays almost no attention because all he’s really thinking about is that cake. It’s the kind with the good dense frosting, none of that airy whipped cream crap. He hasn’t had a decent cake in ages, and he’s pretty sure that that’s where his mind would be even if he were stone cold sober.

At his urging, they finally crack it open and start cutting it up (and sing Happy -Maybe- Birthday to Rowena, no less.) Dean’s on his second slice when Cas leans in very, _ very _close and whispers something. The breath on his ear tingles, Dean wonders if everyone can see the goosebumps it creates, and he realizes that his eyes actually flutter shut as he focuses on that feeling and lets it echo around his body, twisting up with the taste of the buttercream frosting.

He also realizes he has _ no _idea what Cas just said. 

When he turns to give Cas what he hopes is a sort of lost, apologetic look, Cas just laughs (practically infrasound) and tilts his head vaguely in the direction of inside-and-upstairs.

Oh.

Let it never be said Cas can’t be at least a _ little _subtle when he’s sufficiently motivated. 

If anyone says anything about the two of them just vanishing without announcement (and there’s absolutely no way the concentrated sass-bomb out there makes_ no _ comment) Dean doesn’t hear it. 

The stairs feel like a mountain (so much for not hiking) but when he gets to the top of them it’s like he’s flying. Cas goes ahead of him down to the end of the hall. Dean takes Sam’s duffel from the twin room they’re sharing and tosses it out into the corridor, and with that, locks the door behind them.

He’s laughing, because the two of _ them _ kissing on a floral-blanketed bed with a curlicue-laden frame is objectively funny, and also because laughing and kissing combined feels like bubbles popping in his chest in the best possible way.

The vine-pattern blackout curtains are still drawn, which makes the little square room seem sealed and disconnected. If he opened the door, Dean is sure he’d just see blackness, or the swirls of outer space, as they’ve surely broken away from the world in a tumbling, room-shaped box. 

Dean takes the time to examine the hairs on Cas’ arm, softer and lighter than the hair on his head, and he enjoys the little shiver he elicits when he strokes the crook of Cas’ elbow. He’s seen more of Cas-in-short-sleeves in the past week or so than in the _ decade _ before, and he’s still getting used to all this _ arm. _

If Cas had been walking around like this the whole time, all rumpled and unshaven, in soft, thin, worn t-shirts, Dean’s not sure he would have been able to bottle up his feelings quite as long as he did, divine intervention or not.

The hills and valleys of muscle beneath skin are mesmerizing, and he palms all the way up to Cas’ shoulder like someone swooping their hand in the air currents out a car window. When he looks up he finds Cas’ eyes, wide and adoring, irises the same color as the faded cobalt wallpaper behind him.

“I think… maybe now you know how I feel all the time,” Cas says, a little distantly, half-laughing. “Or at least, some version of that.”

“There is_ no way _you feel this good all the time,” Dean counters. 

“Not that part.”

Ah. It takes a moment for the understanding to swirl through a filter into words. He’s talking about the sensory thing, the intensity of it all, how easy it is to get lost in a feeling, and the lack of baked-in notions about which ones are correct or not, good or not, important or not. 

_ That _part. 

If it’s true, he has to give Cas credit for managing to look even slightly normal, ever.

From there, it just seems _ logical _ to get naked. It just makes _ sense, _and from Cas’ reaction it’s obvious that he agrees with how sound this reasoning is. 

The bed is a twin, but it hardly matters, the way they’re pressed together on their sides means they don’t take up too much space. The sheets are powder blue and cool to the touch and Dean can actually feel the movement of heat, the way it pools under the blanket, and seeps from his body into the mattress, and gathers like static between their bellies.

He’s used to naked-with-someone being this goal-oriented thing, foot on the pedal until someone careens off a cliff, but this is (like his thoughts from earlier) _ a whole nother thing. _ He has no idea how long they’re lying there, just doing whatever silly things feel pleasant (Cas traces the backs of his thighs, he nuzzles Cas’ side, at one moment he’s having his scalp scratched, at another he’s swallowing Cas’ cock and earning a laugh-moan that’s _ easily _in the top ten sounds of all time.) 

Dean’s so happily caught up in each fragment as it happens that he loses track of the order of events. One minute they’re doing something that has him tinglingly close to the edge, at another he’s almost overwhelmed with relaxation. When he comes, it takes him almost entirely by surprise.

Later, when Cas is holding him, he murmurs against Dean’s ear, “I fully understand the human desire to experience altered states. It’s always seemed like one of the perks.”

“What do you think of this one?” Dean asks drowsily. 

“It doesn’t feel that different. Though, it’s a relief to relate to my body closer to the way I used to. I don’t feel quite as handcuffed to myself as I usually do.”

“Huh?”

“I’m not _ complaining _ about being human. It’s just pleasant to… if being human now is like speaking a second language twenty-four-seven, this feeling is getting to watch a television show in my native tongue.”

“Very deep,” Dean says, in a way that could be joking but isn’t. “You should write that one down.”

They fall asleep sticky and soothed and in the morning, are forgiven for the room rearrangement with a minimum of teasing -- largely due to Dean’s moment of thoughtfulness in leaving Sam his bag. Boulder’s not so bad, Dean thinks once they’re back on the road with the odd little town in the rear view mirror.

The car and her passengers head south, through Albuquerque, which no one likes and in which they spend as little time as possible.

In Flagstaff, Dean buys everyone straw hats and makes them all wear them in the desert-and-canyon photos (even Rowena, despite her protests that it’s already hard _ enough _ to keep her hair under control without magic.) Cas, at least, is accustomed to this treatment. He likes the straw hat quite a lot more than the cowboy one. 

They mostly stick close to the rim of the canyon, there more for the views than the exertion, but Dean does go out of his way to get a picture of Cas and Jack (in their hats) standing next to the _ BRIGHT ANGEL TRAIL _ sign, with Jack crouching in front so his head obscures the word _ TRAIL. _ In the first shot, Cas looks a bit long-suffering, but in the second, he’s looking down at Jack and realizing just how much _ he _ enjoys the joke, and in the third, Cas’ smile reaches his eyes.

In Utah, they pose for mirrored pictures on the rain-covered Bonneville Salt Flats, the clouds reflected dizzyingly in the water. They stay until the sun goes down. 

In a stroke of luck, the sky clears and they get to see more stars than any of them can now count. Jack asks Cas a million questions about them, and never seems to get tired of Cas talking his ear off about the details, and Dean can’t blame him for that. He has a private laugh, and when Cas turns to him and asks what it’s about, he says it’s nothing, but what it really is is Dean imagining Cas doing ASMR videos for pocket money.

When they check into a motel in Rock Springs, Jack picks up on a pattern about the three rooms they reserve. Rowena, solitary as a leopard, gets her own space (as if she’d have it any other way) and Dean oh-so-casually directs Sam and Jack to the first twin room, which leaves the last room for him and Cas. 

It’s not like Dean thinks Sam doesn’t notice this increasingly common arrangement, but as with most things, it’s a _ he knows I know he knows _ situation and they don’t have to talk about it. It’s not _ every _time, anyway, but it’s enough that Jack apparently feels the need to comment.

“Yeah, I uh--” Dean struggles. The situation had been weird enough before, and it only now hits him that he’s somehow managed to avoid discussing the small-but-also-not-small change, and in retrospect it seems like a problematic omission. “Probably should have said--”

Cas doesn’t jump in to help him out. He just stands there and watches, brow slightly quirked, as Dean flounders. _ He thinks this is funny, _Dean realizes. 

Jack nods, and says, far too sensibly, “Oh, I understand. It’s because you want to have sex. Because you’re in love!”

Rowena splutters and chokes and Sam doubles over with laughter. He clearly tries to say_ that’s about the size of it _ or maybe _ you got it _ but is too breathless so he just gives Jack a nod and a thumbs up.

Jack then defends, against anticipated accusations of naivete, “You know, I already _ knew _ you were in love before.”

“You what?” Dean wheezes slightly.

“I asked Sam, when we went to the cowboy town, and Sam said you were in love with Castiel but you were…” he does air quotes, “_ being a huge idiot about it _ and that if anyone tells you to do something you just do the opposite, so I shouldn’t bring it up, so I _ didn’t _, but it... doesn’t seem like it’s a secret anymore.”

Dean’s all braced for the embarrassment but it fizzles, and he manages to laugh at himself a little, though he does shoot Sam a _ look _ and gets a little _ what-was-I- _ supposed _ -to-do _shrug in response. 

“Yeah, it’s not,” is all Dean really articulates about it before they all go their separate ways for the night. He figures he’ll take questions another time if he has to, but the less of an _ issue _ it is, the better. _ Not a secret _is enough for now.

It becomes a new thing, an inside joke, whenever Sam wants to poke fun or break an awkward moment: when Dean and Cas take a little too long to emerge for breakfast, or when he pulls Cas aside to take a picture, there’s Sam, laying a hand on Dean’s shoulder and saying, satirically over-earnest and with laughter in his voice, _ “Oh, I understand.” _

It gets him elbowed (at least) every time, but that doesn’t seem much of a real deterrent. The way Dean sees it, he’s subjected Sam to a decade of having to keep his cracks bottled up on this topic, so maybe he owes Sam a certain allowance of mischief. 

If he’s entirely honest with himself (as he so rarely is) he sort of likes it. It feels _ normal _ , like the way things used to be before everything went to extra-special shit with the first apocalypse, but _ better. _There was a time not long ago when he wondered if they’d ever play a prank on one another again. 

Their road turns them east, and as the car devours familiar interstate highway miles, they get to introduce Jack to some of their favorite road trip meals, songs, and games. 

Day by day, Rowena starts to adapt to a more practical existence -- this too, does not go unnoticed. 

Somewhere in Ohio, she packs up a bunch of her gowns and has them sent back to an apartment she keeps on the west coast. She disappears shopping for a day and while she’s not exactly dressed like a hunter after, her wardrobe begins to trend more toward flowing slacks and layered tunics than it had before (all_ perfectly _ tailored, of course.) 

Dean can’t resist a joke about it at first, (“Look Sam, she’s gone from Hocus Pocus to Charmed!”) when she joins them at a food court after her first little shopping spree, but she just turns to Cas, in his still-stiff new denim and his thrift store t-shirt and wonders aloud, “Why is it no one makes fun of _ you _ for changing up _ your _style?”

“I was told that the point of this clothing was to ensure exactly that,” Cas says, picking at the knee of his pants. 

Rowena frowns, all quizzical. She gestures to the outfit. “You don’t like all this?”

“The shirt is fine,” he says, “but I was told that the pants I found most comfortable were not appropriate.”

“Not appr--” Rowena turns to Dean and Sam. “You’ve got to… you _ have _to tell me, what--”

Dean gestures to Cas as a little defensively. “He can’t just walk around in... yoga pants, all the time!” It would be incredibly distracting, for one thing, but Dean doesn’t say that part out loud. 

Rowena turns to Cas and lays a delicate hand on his forearm. “You don’t have to listen to him. _ I _ think you’d look _ delightful _ in leggings. Did you tell him they were de rigeur for _ ages? _”

“I did mention that,” Cas says, looking at Rowena’s hand a little dubiously. 

“And _ I _said,” Dean adds to the story, “it’s not… uh, whatever year…”

“1575,” Cas supplies.

“It’s not 1575 anymore,” Dean finishes. Around a mouthful of sesame chicken, he adds, “He’ll get used to it.”

When they reach Maine, they go whale watching and, greatly to Cas’ disappointment, don’t see a single damn whale the entire time. Dean argues with the whale-guaranteeing tour operator until everyone’s uncomfortable, but he gets half a refund. 

Sam apparently tells Wren via text that they’ll be driving past the Stephen King house in Bangor and Wren _ insists _ he stop and take a selfie outside the gate. They turn it into a whole group picture -- Dean has to admit, it just seems like an appropriate photo op, for a bunch of horror survivors. 

“Can we really call ourselves _ survivors _ ?” Rowena corrects, “When every one of us in this car has died _ at least _twice?”

“We’re alive now, aren’t we?” Cas points out.

Something about that sticks in Dean’s brain like a bit of popcorn between his teeth. He tries to ignore it.

They catch wind of an accident on I-95, so as they head south, they go out of their way to avoid that traffic nightmare. Somehow this leads to heading down route 9, beside the Hudson River. The scenery is lovely, but they don’t talk much as they pass by Poughkeepsie. 

Just south of Beacon, they stop and take a hard hat tour of Bannerman Castle, and Dean wonders what kind of problems were probably hiding out here before everything went regular. It looks like classic ghost-bait. Sam even reads off Wikipedia about a murder on the island in 2015, because you can take the man outta the job but you can’t take the job outta the man, apparently.

Rowena asks for a detour to Gettysburg on the road south, something about nostalgia, and Dean realizes that not only was she alive when there was a battle there, she was _ already _what, something like 200 years old at the time?

“Don’t you ever wonder when I came to America? Well… the first time, anyway?” She teases, but never actually explains. 

Tramping around the field itself, they come across a family on vacation. The silver-haired father is well within earshot when he somberly informs his two pre-teen daughters that this is one of the most haunted spots in the country. 

“Daaaaaaad that’s _ stupid, _” says the older one loudly. 

And it is. It _ is _ stupid, which is _ amazing. _ In another world, who knows if he wouldn’t be spending his night crouching in the mist with a sawed-off, defending those girls from cranky spirits with too many buttons on. Here, now, when Rowena’s done her little walk down memory lane, he’s going to eat a burger and sleep in a warm bed with Cas next to him. It seems almost impossible that it’s even real.

He can’t help it when his eyes dart to Sam, who heard the same thing and is looking at him at the same time, and there they are, nudging one another and grinning like lunatics. 

In between stops at points of interest, they unload artifacts: they’ll deal with museums, antique stores, pawn shops, rich weirdos, whoever bids highest. There’s a lot they can carry now, having reclaimed so much of Baby’s prodigious trunk space. Some of it is genuinely worth what they get, but some things need a little assistance. 

Truth is, there’s always been a red-hot streak of _ con man _ in the space between Sam and Dean, and they share an addictive frisson when they pull off a good one. If a little creative storytelling helps some of the Men of Letters’ spooky odds and ends go for more than they’re worth, Dean doesn’t really mind. ( _ Hey, I just charge what the market will bear _ , he says to Cas with a sly shrug. _ It's the American way _.)

Sam doesn’t want to “end up like Capone,” by which he means they ought to stay on top of a really spectacular amount of tax paperwork. Cas rolls up his sleeves on that count, and, after a little bit of reading up, he turns out to have a natural gift for both the numbers and the twists and turns of the regulations. The humor in this, fortunately, is not lost on him.

The other thing Cas mainly does is journal. Sam takes him and Jack shopping for computers (likely tired of having his own borrowed) and Cas picks out something intuitive and lightweight. Dean almost never sees him without it from then on. They’ll be in bars, hotels, parking lots, there’s nowhere that Cas _ won’t _type. 

Dean sneaks a peek at one point, in a motel outside of Raleigh, when his curiosity gets unbearable, and Cas catches him in the act.

“It’s fine for you to look at it,” Cas explains, voice heavy with distress, but not anger. “It’s not a secret. I’m just forgetting things. Old things, mainly--”

“Angel stuff?” Dean worries, because he always worries. If it wasn’t this he’d find something else to worry about, probably.

“Yes. Names, dates, experiences. _ You _ actually suggested I write things down, and I realized it was a good idea. I’m just recording the things that come to mind.” 

“In case they don’t come again,” Dean nods his understanding. “You ever write about anything more… recent?”

Cas shows him another folder on the little silver laptop, where he writes once a week about his experiences in the _ modern _world, stuff since he rescued Dean from Hell, his own version of things. 

These, (_ also not a secret, _ Cas says, _ I just didn’t think you’d be interested since you lived through much of it) _ Dean consumes as fast as Cas can produce them. Were he a snake, he would unhinge his jaw and swallow the stories whole. He doesn't even care how self-centered he looks doing it. The writing is a thousand times more engaging than anything Chuck ever put to paper, with words used like watchmaker’s tools. It’s as cruelly blunt and precise and intricate and beautiful as Cas himself. 

South and south and south, they drive until there’s no more south to go, at least not in the contiguous USA and by car. In Key West, they plant five beach chairs all next to one another and drink cocktails with their toes in the white sand, just the way Dean used to wish they could. Sam takes Cas and Jack to go see the Hemingway house with its polydactyl cats, while Dean and Rowena don’t stray too far from the swim-up bar at the hotel.

After a pitcher of brightly-colored cocktails, Rowena waxes poetic about Crowley, and gets a faraway look when she says, “I didn't get it at first, because I only knew him after it was already underway. Used to think it was strange, what happened to him, but now I realize... it’s not. It was inevitable, from the day he crossed paths with you. I don’t mean to be cruel, you understand, it’s just… a truth. . You happened to him, like you happened to Castiel. Like dye in the water. Nothing’s the same color after it touches you.”

Dean doesn't have the words to protest, so he raises his glass in a silently self-deprecating toast.

On the last day in Florida, Rowena disappears for a few hours and comes back with a convertible the hue of the palm leaves and no explanation, which is how she drops the news that she’s going off on her own for awhile. 

If Dean had been asked a year ago if he’d be sad to see _ Rowena _ go, he’d have laughed, but he sees now why Sam gave her that page, in the grimoire, why he trusted her. It makes Dean feel like some irascible feral street cat, taking so long to warm up, but now they’ve been in the trenches, and that changes things. Heck they’ve all been in one another’s pockets for a couple months at this point. It _ is _weird to say goodbye. 

Still, she’s got her own things to do and to deal with in this new world. They send her off with a couple of relics they think have potential, and watch her summer scarf flutter in the breeze when she drives away.

There’s a kind of quiet among them, after that, and as the summer changes to fall, there’s a sense that they’ve successfully blown off all the steam they need to. 

It isn’t as if they go straight home. Jack in particular has developed a tendency to point out roadside attractions, and on the way back to the middle of the country, they indulge this predilection. (That is, barring “mystery spots,” which Sam continues to not quite trust, no matter how certain he is of the state of things.) 

Over a couple of weeks, Cas becomes a connoisseur of giant twine balls (why there are so _many _giant twine balls, Dean has no idea) and he and Jack argue about the merits of one over the other until Dean threatens to _turn this car around, _even though there isn’t anywhere to go if he did.

Sam keeps scanning the news, and holding his breath every time he gets a phone alert for a missing person. There’s a certain paranoia, he tells Dean, that doesn’t seem to go away. Dean knows, he does it too, if a little more discreetly and not quite as often. 

Nothing ever turns up, even when the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. His instincts seem maladapted now, like a moth circling a light, trying to navigate by the moon without accounting for the invention of the electric bulb.

They’re in Oklahoma when they ultimately decide to take Jack to see what remains of Singer Salvage, and for the rest of the drive, they tell him stories about Bobby. 

_ \--...and he built it in his free time, can you believe that...-- _

_ \--...bravely allowed me to touch his soul to recharge, despite the risks...-- _

_ \--...but there was holy water in the beer, so...-- _

Before Dean knows it, the wheels are chattering away on the familiar gravel.

They’ve let Jody know they’re coming, and she drives out to meet them. The conversation turns to the fact that they aren’t sure where they’re going to go home to. She squints against the harsh sun when she says, “Why don’t you just stay here?”

Four heads swivel.

“Well,” she says, nodding toward Sam and Dean, “he willed the property to you two. I can dig up the paperwork down at city hall. Frankly, you’re lucky this place is as isolated as it is so no one’s made any complaints about the way it looks.”

She has a point. There’s been a discussion about connecting the bunker to real, non-magical utilities, and based on what little they know about it, they’re not sure if it’s possible at all. If it is, it’d probably cost as much as putting up new construction, and Dean doesn’t even want to think about what the gas and power bills would look like. All that money and maintenance, just to live underground, it hardly seems worth it. 

Besides, what everyone here knows and no one is saying out loud, perhaps for fear of jinxing it: the old girl has worked hard for them, but they no longer need her services. It would be strange to stay, like living in an Egyptian pyramid.

It is that moment, on an unseasonably hot early-autumn day in South Dakota, when they make the decision: A house will stand on Singer Salvage Yard again -- one built for this future, with no need for a salt-lined panic room in the cellar or a devil’s trap beneath the carpet. 

At Jody’s favorite bar, they make scribbles on napkins. Sam imagines a wall with built-in bookshelves, and a quiet place to read or work. After years in the bunker, Dean wants _ light _more than anything, natural light, maybe a porch to sit on. The two of them dominate the conversation, but when pressed, Cas admits that he’s more interested in the yard, that he thinks it might be nice to try a garden. 

He has just a hint of a wicked, knowing smile when he asks Dean what he thinks about beekeeping. It gets one of those golden in-joke laughs out of both Dean and Sam, a confused smile from Jody, and a look of serious contemplation from Jack.

It’s not the _ first _ time that Dean kisses Cas right out in public, where anybody can see, but it’s almost definitely in the first ten times or so. He’s not _ hiding _ a damn thing, thank-you-very-much, it’s just not his usual style. His more typical discreet-hand-holding, shoulder-touching, back-tracing, close-standing manner of affection generally seems to suit Cas just fine. Then again, Cas doesn’t seem to mind _ this _, either. 

From there, the fluid summer slows to a trickle, and then begins to dry up.


	10. Natural | Chapter 3: Fall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT NOTICE: So, I did _try_ to make this whole story basically upbeat, but Dean was like, "fake news" and wouldn't have it. I wanted to mention this at the start, because this is where a lot of the more unpleasant-looking tags up there come into play and I didn't want anyone humming along cheerfully and then getting smacked upside the head. Some of what Dean goes through is based somewhat on my own personal experiences, which meant I felt that it had a chance to trigger people. So, consider this a heads up to glance at the tags and make sure you're still on board for that right now.

[Soundtrack: Misunderstood, by Dream Theater](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdpCnRSeshU)

Part Three: Natural | Chapter Three: Fall

Right before Sam was born, Dean had a book of jokey riddles, a gift from mom. He’d liked them in concept, and successfully guessed his fair share (for a little kid, anyway) but when he couldn’t get them quickly, he’d get frustrated. 

He knew the answers were there, though, printed upside-down at the bottom of the page. So Dean worked a little harder at learning to read. He pretended like he was worse at it than he really was, both so his mom would keep reading aloud to him, and so that during their riddle-sessions, he could climb into her arms between her body and the book and catch just enough of the answer (a keyword, maybe) to act like he’d come up with it himself.

_ When is a door not a door? _

_ ɹɐɾ ɐ s,ʇᴉ uǝɥʍ _

He thinks about that one a lot, these days.

Time passes strangely, one week disappearing in a blink and the next stretching out like melted cheese. The movement of time has always been a little hard to get a grip on ever since Dean returned from hell, he just had an easier time ignoring it before, because the world never tried to end on any particular schedule, so what did it matter? 

Now, he’s not living underground, and he’s not itinerant, and he’s _ noticing _the seasons change, in their little temporary rental house on the outskirts of Sioux Falls. It seems like something that only happens to people in movies, not in real life, days slipping and fading too smoothly, like a montage. It makes him itch. 

He thinks of a war story his father always used to tell._ In Vietnam, _ he said, _ it was so wet, I’d spend days or weeks just soaked through to the skin, and then one day I realized my feet felt funny. Took me a minute to figure out it’s because they were dry. _

Dean wonders what his father would have hunted, if he’d have come back from Vietnam and never found a new enemy to get his hooks into.

It would have been something. Maybe it’s for the best it was real monsters.

Sometimes normal isn’t normal. 

(When is a door not a door?)

Jack, at least, seems relatively content. Last Dean heard, he’s taking some kind of online class for a GED, ‘cause he met some nice kids that go to Augustana or USF or something and he’s sold on the concept. 

Dean tries to ignore the fact that the only thing he was ever good at doesn’t exist anymore, he tries to walk around like he’s not carrying any shame in his certainty that he’s the dumbest person in the house, getting flexed on by someone who’s (technically) less than five years old.

Of course, that’s not even to mention the agita when he starts looking up how much Jack’s ambitions might cost. A very real chunk of the cash reserves they’d managed to build up from divesting the bunker of its treasures has already gone to backdated taxes on the Singer property, the house construction, and the current rental. 

There’s enough left over that Sam’s got some plan allowing, as he’d put it, _ “either a very very frugal retirement, or a modestly comfortable partial retirement, depending on if we can get some money coming in. Still dreaming about being a bartender?” _

No, Dean’s dreaming about other things these days: grimy underground lairs, abandoned warehouses, washed-out and ruined worlds full of man-shaped skittering things, the insides of coffins and other, similar boxes. He wakes up several times a night while he’s still asleep -- waking from one dream directly into the next, _ convinced _he’s awake this time, sometimes still several layers deep. 

Cas probably knows, or suspects, because sometimes Dean turns over in bed and wakes him, asks him weird questions as a way of trying to figure out what layer this is. Most alarmingly, in the morning, he often asks if he woke Cas last night or not. 

Sometimes the answer is _ no _ when Dean’s sure it should be yes_. _

He ends up fixating on Sam’s throwaway comment: he goes and applies for a job at a dive downtown, near one of those colleges, and is accepted on the spot. 

The manager, a woman named Lucy only a couple years older than Dean (who reminds him so much of Ellen it hurts) cites the fact that he’s “an actual adult” as the primary deal-making qualification, as well as the fact that he’s “pretty enough to maybe lure a few more ladies in here.”

A little physical work might be good for what ails him -- keep him too tired for nightmares, get him out of the house. Plus, it’s got perks. Lucy much doesn’t care if he drinks on the job as long as shit gets done, and she gives him input on the menu, once he demonstrates some taste. 

Hardly a two weeks in, he gets a key. She trusts him, just like that. He tries to ignore the part of his head that says she’s an idiot and listen to the part wants to trust her trust in him. It’s difficult.

Still, every time she says _ thanks for the hard work, Winchester, _ or _ you’re a lifesaver, _ or _ boy am I glad I hired you, _it feels like he’s getting a little of himself back.

If he starts to get a creeping feeling when he works alone on slow or rainy nights, and just about jumps out of his skin one evening when a lady with a briefcase comes in? That’s just another thing to ignore and not talk about. This kind of shit is like a gas, he tells himself, the more space you give it, the more space it takes up, so he endeavors not to give it any.

Somewhere in all of this, Sam starts shedding. 

At first, Dean thinks the long brown hairs appearing everywhere are just from the realities of getting older. People say you take after your maternal grandfather, in terms of hair loss, which means they're both probably utterly doomed, and boy does Dean have a sackful of bald jokes ready for his hair-vain little brother. At least, that is until they’re all sitting around on their devices on a quiet afternoon and the reality becomes apparent. 

He looks up, and there’s Sam: one hand on his keyboard, the other reaching up to his head, slow and trance-like. His fingers sift over a halo of flyaways, like they’re looking for exactly the right hair, and when they find it, they separate it from the rest, slip down it once, twice, double-and-triple-checking, and then the strand is pulled free.

And he does it again, and when he finally catches himself after a few repetitions, it stops for a little while, but when his attention wanders, there he goes again. Now that Dean’s seen it, he can’t _ unsee _ it, and he realizes just how often it must be happening. Sam has always been a hair-toucher, but this seems like something else entirely.

Dean doesn’t make any bald jokes.

They don’t talk about it. 

Actually, _ Sam _ doesn’t really talk that much at all. When he’s home, he’s perpetually buried in one screen or another, but he’s not even home that much. He goes out a lot -- sometimes it’s to the gym (those times are obvious, because Jack goes with him) but a lot of times Dean has no idea where he’s going. Being at the bar several nights a week, sometimes their paths hardly cross for days. This is fine, Dean keeps telling himself, he has every right, but still, it scrapes at his nerves.

A little voice in Dean’s head whispers that it doesn’t really matter. None of it does.

(When is a door not a door?)

Dean doesn’t ask Cas how he’s doing, because if you don’t talk about how you feel, everything is fine (or so says that same little voice, that shuts him up every time he thinks about asking.) No news is good news, including when you don’t ask for news because you’re not sure you can handle it, and including with someone who you _ know _hides pain like a wild animal. 

At one point, he thinks about reading Cas’ journal -- after all, Cas gave him blanket permission, said that if his mind ever changed and he wanted it private he’d say -- but Dean decides this is no different from asking and would still force him to take some action if he found something unpleasant. If he keeps his distance, he can always say _ I didn’t know _and mean it. 

Plus, it’s harder to hurt Cas, this way, when the unraveling begins. 

It isn’t that he doesn’t see what's happening as he self-destructs outward. He stubs his toe on a chair, and then kicks the legs out from under it. It’s a large, heavy chair, so he breaks a whole _ different _toe. He gets a fast food order with a minor mistake and he throws everyone’s food out the car window, and then swerves to startle Jack when he complains. 

He blows up at Sam for going away for a couple of days and taking too long to answer a check-in text (and Sam dredges up some really expert shots in return, fending him off until he storms out.)

His fuse is short, too short, and a part of him_ knows _ it, but that part can generally fuck off. 

(When is a door not a door?)

(˙ʇoᴉpᴉ 'lɐǝɹ sᴉ ƃuᴉɥʇou uǝɥʍ)

What Dean can’t quite figure out is _ how _ none of it is real. At first, he convinces himself it’s Michael -- that the whole confrontation in the imaginary bar and everything since -- that it’s _ all _fake, designed to drive Dean deeper so that Michael can run amok in his body more efficiently. 

Or maybe they’re in the box. Maybe he made the box and _ got into it _and this whole thing is his brain trying to protect him from claustrophobia, or it’s Michael messing with him while they’re trapped together. 

In a moment of lucidity, he thinks he should really talk to Sam about this, that Sam would get it, absolutely get it, that Sam’s been down in this hole, and that’s when it clicks. 

That's a trap. He _ can’t _ talk to Sam, because Sam’s _ part of it. _And then it all makes sense. 

It’s a djinn dream. 

He can’t believe it took him this long -- or did it? Any number of memories could have been implanted. It could have started _ today _for all he knows. 

Dean gets in the car on a Wednesday he has off and investigates every abandoned storefront and dead shopping mall and old warehouse he can find within a two hour drive, and finds not even a dust bunny out of place. 

It’s got to be there, he just hasn’t found it yet. 

Since nothing is real and he’s going to have to die to go back to the real world anyway (and hey, Sylvia Plath, eat your heart out, no one _does it better _than Dean. How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice!) he starts drinking on the way home and doesn’t stop when he gets there. A bunch of things happen, the order of them, who knows? At some point there’s shouting. Fake Sam and Fake Cas are there. And then he’s in another room, and there’s pain, and some smells (rust, acid, lavender) but that’s about all his brain bothers to encode to memory. He doesn’t stop drinking then, either. 

They’re not real. He needs to get back to the real Sam and the real Cas. He needs to tell the _real_ Cas how he feels! 

Then he’s waking up in the rental house’s mint green 70’s bathtub in boxers and a filthy t-shirt, with his mouth open and cottony and Jack (of all people) sitting on the floor next to the tub. 

“Jack?” Dean rasps. His throat feels like he’s been eating razors. “What’s going on?”

“I’m watching over you,” Jack says placidly. “It’s Friday morning.”

What happened to Thursday? He groans and lets his head fall back. The edge of the tub is closer than he’d realized, so there’s a painful _ thunk. _

“Sam and Castiel said they had enough, and that you could…” Jack does air-quotes when he says,_ “stew in your own juices.” _

“What about you?”

“I volunteered to make sure you didn’t choke on your own vomit. You were a bit meaner to them.” Jack says, very matter-of-fact. He follows it up with the most gone-native millennial thing Dean could imagine: “You mostly just accused _ me _ of being secretly dead, and I wasn’t offended by that.”

“Which death did I think stuck?” Dean frowns. 

“It wasn’t clear.”

“I didn’t bring up my… mom?”

Jack shakes his head. 

“Huh,” Dean says. “Weird.” When he tries to climb out of the tub he discovers some injuries -- pain blossoms at his joints and across his skin when he moves. It’s bruises, mostly, and some small cuts and scrapes, scattered enough it’s hard to tell what’s what. His hands are particularly messy. The weirdest one is a well-reinforced square of white bandage bordered by careful tape, just below his sternum. 

There’s a kitchen knife in the dusty crevice between the toilet and the tub, and he’s not sure he _ wants _to put together the pieces of this puzzle.

“I don’t know how to convince you,” Jack says, catching him before he falls and helping him down to the floor slowly. They sit side by side against the wall, on the little bamboo bath mat Cas picked out at World Market because he thought it would feel nice on his feet. “It’s real. All of this is real. I went to The Empty, and I did _ something, _even if I can’t remember what, and because of that, things are like this now.”

“How do I believe that?” Dean laments. “No monsters, Cas loves me… or he _ did _, anyway… Sam’s safe, you’re safe, we’re having a damn house built? How’m I supposed to believe any of this is real?”

“I don’t know.” Jack shrugs. “I learned everything I could about djinns, at least, about what they were before, trying to find something that would prove it to you. Sam even reached out to see if there were any former djinns online, who’d gone human now but might have something helpful to say. We did find someone, a woman in Dubai who said she was a leader of a group in Syria, before -- she knows Castiel, isn't that funny?”

“And?”

“I wasn’t very successful.” Jack looks down at the rug, defeated. “She said that she'd be happy to come and visit but that there's no reason you'd believe that wasn't just part of it. Sam said that when one... got you... before, you figured it out from seeing the other victims. You haven’t been seeing anything like that, right?”

“Right,” Dean says, hopefully.

“But if, for some reason, there _ were _no other victims…” Jack trails off. 

With a wave of misery, Dean realizes the real reason Sam doesn’t want to talk to him. In his djinn dream all those years ago, he’d had to kill himself to escape, against the urgings of everyone around him, Dream-Sam most of all. If it was just about Dean being an asshole, surely it would be _ Sam _sitting here on the bathroom floor, probably giving him a hell of a hard time but still, here. 

He’s _ not _here, because he’s scared he’ll say the wrong thing, sound too much like the long-ago imaginary Sam, and be the thing that actually shoves Dean overboard.

“Also,” Jack says, in that _ reading-from-the-encyclopedia _voice that he gets sometimes, “I’m fairly certain Castiel still loves you.”

“Too dumb to know better,” Dean says, staring up at the ceiling to avoid what he’s pretty sure will be a look of disapproval from Jack at that comment. “Where’d they go?”

“They didn’t tell me, because they didn’t want me to tell you.”

A Sam plan, if Dean’s ever heard one. 

When he finally makes it down the stairs alone, he doesn’t even have time to survey the damage, though it’s obvious there is some. So much for the security deposit. Jody’s in uniform at the front door, squad car parked out front, and the look on her face is half irritated cop, half disappointed mom. She’s got a hand just close enough to quickly reach, if necessary, what Dean recognizes as a taser. She’s not alone, either. He can’t see who, but someone’s in the car. 

She doesn’t feel completely safe, he realizes with significant discomfort.

_ She shouldn’t, _ says the little voice in Dean’s head. _ That’s you. Dangerous. Predator. Unsafe. Always has been you, for better or worse. _

“You know what’s funny?” Jody starts.

Dean knows better than to say anything to that. He almost does anyway, but manages to keep his mouth shut.

“When I got Sam’s call, I was_ already _on my way here. Old Matty called the non-emergency line yesterday evening and I was planning on stopping by today,” she says, referencing their closest neighbor, an elderly man living alone maybe thirty yards down the road. “Guess you and Sam really got some lungs on ya, huh?”

“Shit. Jody, I’m sorry--”

“Can it.”

“It’s--”

“I said, can it,” Jody repeats, face set in cement. “I talked to Sam. And Jack, for that matter." She nods into the house. "You know, that kid’s probably the most well-adjusted of the lot of you. Told me he was reading about trauma, and conflict, and... meditating or something?” She switches gears abruptly. “I don’t know why you didn’t_ say _something. No, nevermind, I do.” She waves a hand, dismissing her own prior statement. “It’s a… frog boiling in a pot thing, I know.”

Dean rubs a hand over his face and through his hair, and takes a steadying breath. Jesus fucking Christ. 

Jody reaches her point: “Listen, I know a guy. He’s a_ good _ guy. He helped me, helped Claire _ a lot _ \-- so much I think she’d even admit it. It’s not a magical, better-instantly thing, but--”

“Jody, no, I’m not gonna--Maybe church didn’t work out so this is your new hobby, but a _ shrink _ is not gonna help _ me. _” He suppresses a wince. That came out… not great.

“Dean.” Her jaw tenses but she doesn’t take the bait, she’s too professional for that. “I’m not kidding. Remember how I said a second ago I talked to Sam and Jack? Well, _ Castiel _ wouldn’t even _ talk _ to me, not much. I’ve been at this a long time. I _ know _ that kind of silence, Dean. It’s the _ ride or die, snitches get stitches _ kind.”

“Oh, like he’s some kind of--Come _ on _ , you _ know _ I’d never--”

“The guy’s from ATVA,” Jody just keeps going. She’s a woman on a mission, ignoring the nonsense falling out Dean’s mouth, making him feel like he’s being read his rights. “Most of his patients are like you. SWAT guys who walk into buildings full of armed skinheads, teachers who live through school shootings, victims of natural disasters. It’s not what you think.”

“And what am I supposed to tell him!?” Dean’s outside his body, watching himself shouting in the doorway now, speaking in a harsh growl-shout, spitting sarcasm, throwing up his hands. “That I’m secretly over eighty but oh, I look great, ‘cause I spent half that time in _ hell _? That an archangel took a hatchet to the inside of my head? That had to watch--” 

He’s in the middle of a hostile, axe-handed gesture toward the inside of the house, when he stops his mouth before he can get through that next example.

That one, he doesn’t even want to say out loud.

Jody is unmoved. “Yeah,” she says, nodding a little. “Yeah. That. That stuff. You tell him that stuff.”

Dean rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I’m_ sure _ he won’t send the padded van for me after _ that. _”

“How do you think I _ met _ him, Dean?” Her voice is quiet, now, low and real. “Take a guess. _ You’re _ a lot more likely to get close to the right answer than most people. I didn’t look him up in the yellow pages, that’s for damn sure.”

“Just ‘cause he knows there are… were… monsters…” Dean realizes what this really is, and doesn’t bother to finish his original sentence. “I’m guessing this isn’t a polite suggestion.”

“Nope,” Jody says, with a dark little pop on the _ p. _ “I can restrain you and take you down to Sioux Falls General and we can all have a worse day than we already are, _ or _ you can talk to Stan.”

“You’re really not gonna let this go, huh?”

“Like a bulldog with a bone.” She lets a little smile filter through. 

  


* * *

  
  
  


The guy (Stan-from-ATVA, in Dean’s mind) is apparently about ninety percent retired and living over in Worthington, and the favor he feels he owes Jody is enough to get him out of the house on short notice. 

Stan-from-ATVA turns out to be stocky, with a face like something out of Easter Island if you added silver hair and dark caterpillar eyebrows. He’s also one of the most abrasive, blunt people Dean’s ever met, which is saying something, considering the company Dean tends to keep. He’s impatient and impossible to charm, and Jody was right, the first time they talk it’s not for a _ session _ it’s for _ seven hours _and Dean’s pretty sure he doesn’t hear the word “feelings” once. He's also pretty sure that's entirely on purpose.

It’s more like getting grilled by a lawyer than he’d imagined therapy would be. The dude is relentless, he picks lies apart like they’re cotton candy and is allergic to “I don’t know” and “I don’t remember.”

“Well what _ do _you remember?” Replies Stan-from-ATVA every fucking time, driving Dean absolutely nuts, but then, in each scenario (and much to Dean’s chagrin) the details always come together, one after another.

“I blacked out,” Dean repeats, many times, about what happened between Wednesday and Friday.

“For a day and a half? Yeah, I don’t think you did,” Stan says, devoid of doubt.

He’s surprised at how much comes back to him, before the end.

They’re winding down when Dean, exhausted and vulnerable, asks him what the hell the point of all this is. It’s not like he’s gonna be happy. It’s not gonna make everything okay, and it’s sure as hell not going to convince him this is real. 

Stan From ATVA says, cool and even, in a tone like he’s said this many times before, “This isn’t eat-pray-love, Dean. You’ve got the wrong idea of the win condition here. We don’t win when everything is okay. We win when you have the tools to _ remember _ what you’ve been through without _ reliving _ it.”

“Like flashbacks? I thought those were from… fireworks, or cars backfiring, that kind of thing.”

“Not always. It can be lots of things. For you… it’s a weird one,” Stan says, with the familiar smile of a seasoned professional in a situation that’s not boring, for once. “It’s Lucy’s. Every time you get behind that bar, your brain just--”

Dean looks for all the world like a bird with its feathers ruffled. “That’s not fair, man. That’s not-- I gotta make a living, and I _ like _ working there. I actually _ like _ it!”

“I believe you.”

“Do I have to quit?”

“Mm, I don’t recommend it,” says Stan.

“What _ do _ you recommend?”

“Getting better.”

“What about the djinn stuff?” Dean looks around the living room with skepticism. “What if it _ is _a dream? Then what?”

“I don’t know, Dean, what if it’s the matrix? What if you’re in a coma? Are you a man dreaming he’s a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he’s a man? You know, I once met a guy who was in a car accident and he was unconscious for about a day. When he woke up he said he had memories of something like fifteen years -- he’d gotten married, had kids, the whole deal. Spent ages after that mourning a bunch of people who never existed… as far as we know.”

“What’s your point, Stan?”

“My point is, _ your _brain’s got a particularly handy excuse, but if you think you’re the first person with PTSD to experience paranoia and derealization then boy do I have some news for you.”

“So what those other people do?” Dean’s voice cracks, desperation leaking through. He wants to believe. He really, really wants to believe. “The ones who get better?”

Stan takes out a little spiral-bound notepad and a pen, writes something, and hands it to Dean.

Dean reads it, and then looks back up at Stan. “What--”

“I’ve got a couple of workbooks for you too, actually.”

“Since when does therapy have homework?”

“Since we found out it helps. You asked what the people who get better do. This is what they do. It’s not all One-Flew-Over-the-Cuckoo’s-Nest. Mostly it’s pretty boring.”

They make an appointment -- a normal one, not an all-day one -- three days away. Stan gives Dean some instructions in case of an urgent situation, and leaves ("No, you don't need to be hospitalized. You can keep it together for a couple days.") Dean feels like he’s made of spun glass, about to shatter if someone so much as breathes on him. Aren’t people supposed to feel better after therapy? He’s pretty sure he feels worse.

He goes upstairs, toes off his shoes, and gets in bed with the workbook. 

Sam winds up talking to the guy too, a little, kind of incidentally. Dean doesn’t ask what they talk about, but Sam gets what looks like a referral letter, and starts going out at the same time every week for something marked on their kitchen calendar as “EMDR.”

Dean googles it. He doesn’t really get it, but if it’s helping, it’s helping, and he’s not going to talk shit.

There’s never any evidence that everything is real, but he keeps getting up in the morning anyway, until it’s a habit. 

He hates to admit it, but when he follows instructions, things actually do, slowly but surely, start to get better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you're wondering if Stan is who you think he is-- he is. Part of the inspiration for this chapter and how to resolve it was me sighing and going "gosh what he really needs is Stanley Keyworth" and then going "well heck, let him have Stanley, then!"


	11. Natural | Chapter 4: Winter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back to your regularly scheduled fluff.

[Soundtrack: No Choir, by Florence and the Machine](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AexrAvyJjJY)

Part Three: Natural | Chapter Four: Winter

Dean spends a lot of time at the construction site. There's a feeling of productivity there, bundled up with nostalgia, and he likes standing around outside in the cold. Somehow it's easier to keep an eye on his breathing when he can actually see the air that comes out when he exhales. He’s involved with rubble-clearing in great detail as well, as he goes through every lingering, rusted car he thinks might have an Impala-compatible part he can use for future repairs. 

He does this half because it’s useful and important, and half because it’s a kind of penance-slash-meditation thing. Jack doesn’t really get it, but Sam and Cas absolutely do. He’s on his hands and knees on the gravel, dirty and freezing, and it makes sense. It makes him feel like a snake shedding an old skin. 

_That_ project is almost done when he finds a new one. He stumbles across it, hidden improbably between two pickup trucks amid the rusting wreckage: a touring motorcycle that does not seem to belong. On closer inspection, it truly is what he’d first thought. Not only is it a Harley, it’s an Electra Glide from 1985, and he practically  _ vibrates  _ when he realizes how close it is to functional. It needs a little work, and it  _ definitely  _ needs a new coat of paint, but the work is all well within his capabilities.

This is his secret. He doesn’t even tell Sam. He moves the bike to a shed on the edge of the Singer property that he instructs the builders to never, ever touch. 

He hasn’t missed the way Cas looks at the birds these days. Dean can’t give him back his wings, but he’s got a seed of hope buried deep that this is some kind of beautiful confluence, that if he likes this, it might be just close enough to take a little of that sting away. 

So, he has to do this right. Slowly, correctly, and carefully.

Slowly, at least, turns out not to be a problem: The weather delays construction and bike repair alike. 

Jack’s new friends are mostly that very specific sort of mid-western young person that, in Dean’s experience, has more energy than good sense and almost nowhere for that energy to go. The result is bad ideas like the one Jack’s currently packing for: mid-winter camping.  Historically, this is exactly the kind of thing he ends up rescuing people from, but he reminds himself that all the monsters that bear spray can’t handle are gone, and besides, he doesn’t want to hover, so all he does is make sure the kid’s got a SPOT tracker and sends him on his way.

In a strange turn for Winchester life, the weekend seems basically uneventful. Jack makes it home just before the first big blizzard hits. Just when everyone relaxes, it becomes apparent that of course it wasn't that simple -- he turns out to have brought home a flu to sweep through the house while they’re snowed in. 

Dean is the only one who doesn’t get sick. Sam insists it’s because he drinks enough alcohol to sterilize his insides. 

Jack infects Sam almost immediately, and Cas helps Dean take care of the two of them with the few provisions they’ve got in the house. Jack bounces back pretty quickly, going from fairly certain he’s dying (since the last time he’d felt even vaguely similar to this, he  _ had  _ been) to basically fine in just a few days. Sam takes a little longer. He positively  _ refuses _ to be fussed over. Whether those two things are related is matter of debate.

He hates to admit it, because it seems solipsistic at best and cruel at worst, but there’s a part of Dean that  _ likes  _ this. While their little micro-epidemic rages, there’s always a problem, outside of himself, that he can identify and fix, a need that he can meet, and the actual _ process  _ of doing so takes up time and energy that then cannot be used for ruminating.

It reminds him of the bike, which he  _ itches _ to get back to the second this all lets up. 

Cas, when he catches the flu, gets it the worst out of anybody, and it starts on the day that the snow comes back for round two.

For all of his morning grouchiness, Dean's almost always slept a bit like a new mother: that is, jolting awake when he senses distress in the room. It's a holdover from years and years of having to be the one that wakes when Sam needed something, and it's a groove too deep to ever really wear smooth. This time, when he stirs, he isn’t sure quite why until he turns over and sees Cas, curled up in a ball under trembling covers. 

“Uh-oh,” Dean says when he twists around and sees him, voice thick with sleep. “I told you you were gonna get it.”

Cas doesn’t roll over, or uncurl. A wave of chills crests and then declines, and from his position, he says, “I... hate this.”

“Aw, c’mon.” Dean reaches for his back, and finds it damp with sweat. “You’ve been in worse straits.”

“That doesn’t mean I have to like it,” Cas’ words are clipped with impatience. “I feel like someone’s blowing up a balloon inside my head. The world spins every time I move.”

“Lemme go get you some advil.”

“We’re out,” Cas grumbles hoarsely. 

Dean mutters, “we’ll see about that.”

He trudges out in the cold and the wind to where the car is slowly being consumed by day three of the second on-and-off storm. Dean is certain that he’s got some painkillers in there somewhere, but he searches until his fingers just about freeze and finds nothing. A few months not hunting apparently takes its toll on the car-supplies situation. 

There’s nothing in Sam’s room (he wakes up Sam in the process of searching and just about gets himself tackled sneaking around in the dark) and even his duffel bag, where he could have sworn he’d stashed a mini-bottle of some kind of anti-inflammatory, is barren. 

He doesn’t return to Cas empty-handed, though. 

“You want me to drink liquor?” Cas’ face is a portrait of incredulity when he smells what’s in the mug. 

_ “This,”  _ Dean says, “Is not  _ just  _ liquor. It’s whiskey, ginger ale, and honey, nuked for a minute. Kinda like a hot toddy, Winchester-style.” He shoves another couple of pillows under Cas’ curled-up form until he’s just vertical enough to drink. 

“Ah, here and I assumed that  _ any  _ cocktail Winchester-style was just whiskey right from the bottle,” Cas says through chattering teeth. 

“Oh, he’s got jokes! Can’t be  _ that  _ sick, then.” 

Cas glares at him, but drinks as he’s told. “Is this really supposed to help?”

“It’s supposed to make you care less about how shitty you feel,” Dean explains. “And help you sleep through some of it. And put hair on your chest, or so dad used to say.”

Dean knows how bad Cas feels when he makes no comment whatsoever about the hair-on-chest thing. The fever gets worse, as the night goes on. Dean strokes Cas' back and stops touching entirely, in turns, based on hand-signals when Cas is too woozy and nauseous even open his mouth to speak. Dean retrieves the bottle of ginger ale on its own -- there isn't much of that left either, but it's perfectly flat and it helps at least a little with the swoops of queasiness. 

In the valleys between peaks of the chills, Dean says, “How ‘bout I distract you?”

“How?” It’s amazing how much doubt Cas manages to inflect into a single syllable.

“I used to tell stories to Sam, or read to him from something. When he was  _ really _ little I’d sing, but--”

Cas turns just a little at that last thing. 

“Yeah no I don’t think you want me singing.”

“Try me.” There’s the seed of amusement in there, buried under all the layers of misery.

“Alright,” Dean chuckles, “your funeral.”

He lays down next to Cas, gently up against his tightly curled back, more to support Cas' bed position than anything else, and thinks a moment, picking something to sing -- the Billy Joel song isn’t the  _ first  _ thing that pops into his head, but it’s in the top five _ .  _

Dean might be feeling his age, but his hearing is as good as ever. He knows it’s as terrible as he said and more -- he only gets up to  _ that’s where you found me, when you put your arms around me  _ when Cas laughs weakly, which turns into a rattling cough. 

“See?” Dean says, but he doesn’t actually stop singing, he just keeps going. 

Somewhere around  _ I’ll take my chances, I forgot how nice romance is _ Cas says, “I regret everything. If the fever doesn’t kill me, this definitely will,”

There’s a little smile on his face, though, which is all Dean wanted to see, so he stops singing only long enough to say, “Oh yeah? Maybe I’ve decided I  _ like _ singing. Maybe I won’t stop until you’re healthy enough to shut me up yourself.”

Cas’ hair has grown long, he hasn’t bothered to cut it, and there’s a random, light sprinkling of gray at the roots, strange to see.. Dean cards his hands through it as he sings, and doesn’t stop when the song is over. Sometime in the next twenty minutes or so of quiet, Dean whispers, “You awake?” and gets no response, his patient finally at rest.

The snow’s supposed to stop soon. In the morning, Dean will layer up and go dig out the car, and once the plow comes through, he’ll go downtown at five miles an hour and buy enough NyQuil and ibuprofen and sudafed to start his own pharmacy. 

He knows exactly why he thought of that song.  _ I have been a fool for lesser things -- _ that’s the bit that he’d remembered first. 

Street lights bounce off the flat white world outside, and the light from the window is bright, for the middle of the night, so he just lays on his side and watches Cas’ chest rise and fall until sleep sneaks in and takes him, too.

  
  


* * *

  
  
  


On a brisk afternoon in March, Cas comes outside (in response to a deliberately cryptic text message) to find Dean straddling a Harley painted the color of a ripe blueberry. Dean grins, brandishing a second helmet: a slightly retro-styled tan one as compared to the pearlescent forest green that Dean’s wearing with the face-shield raised.

“Surprise!” Dean calls from the street, “I was gonna get wings airbrushed on the side, but I thought that might be a little on the nose.”

Cas’ brows furrow, the little line between them more pronounced these days than ever. He approaches slowly, like he’s walking up to a dangerous wild animal. 

When he’s close enough, Dean presses the helmet into his hands. “I admit, my timing sucks, you’re probably barely gonna get a ride in before the next snow, but what was I gonna do, hide it until spring gets started for real?”

“Oh.”

Dean laughs. “Oh? That’s all? Oh?” This was one of the outcomes he’d considered, and he’s not offended yet. He’s pretty sure he can bring Cas around. 

“I mean, I… thank you,” Cas attempts, but the confusion has stuck to his face like a burr. “Do you… want me to go somewhere?”

“What? Look, just… try it out. Put the helmet on, hop on the back, we’ll go out to the old church parking lot and you can tell me what you think. No pressure. You hate her, it’s fine.” And a few weeks ago, when he was mid-restoration and back was killing him, it  _ wouldn’t _ have been fine for Cas to hate it. Now, though, Dean’s a little in love with this bike and if it turns out to be a gift more for himself, he can live with that too.

Cas climbs onto it a little awkwardly. 

“The helmet feels… tight,” he says. 

“It’s supposed to be snug. I measured your head when you were sleeping,” Dean admits.

“You--” Cas’ face crinkles with a laugh. “I see.” 

He puts his arms gingerly around Dean, too loosely to be safe, so Dean has to grasp him by the arms and pull him in closer. When they’re situated, Dean thinks he could get used to this: the column of heat at his back and the pressure of Cas’ grip at his waist. 

Then again, if this goes as planned, it’ll be the other way round, and he suspects he'll appreciate that just as much. He's been quietly fantasizing about Cas on this bike (and everything that entails, from wild helmet-hair to yards of leather) since he found it, and enjoying_ that_ up-close-and-personal is pretty high on his list of hopes.

“Tap twice if you want me to stop,” Dean says right before they set off.

He can feel the tension in Cas’ body at first, but likewise he can feel when that anxiety starts to bleed away. To give that process a little more space, he takes the long route to the big, empty lot, and when they stop, and Cas shifts the face-plate, he looks just this side of pleased. Good.

Dean hands over his gloves. “Ready to try her out yourself?”

Cas is ultimately a good sport about it. Dean teaches him the basics: where all the controls are, how to shift gears, the fact that where you look is where you go. 

He drops the bike a couple of times, and Dean’s pretty sure he’ll have some bruises on his legs, but he’s unsurprisingly stubborn about it, like he is with most things. The Harley looks to Dean, all of the sudden, like a wild horse that iron-willed Cas is trying to break. He starts catching on properly before sunset, and when he does, he  _ really  _ does, going from stalling and wobbling most of the afternoon to suddenly doing slaloms and figure 8’s like it’s no problem at all. (His fantasies were right: it's extremely hot, even at this stage.)

Dean ends up being the one to take them home anyway -- Cas is tired, and the little reprieve of nice weather (fool’s spring, Donna calls this) has too many kids out playing, it makes him nervous. He forgets to take the gloves back, though, and by the time they make it back, Dean can hardly feel his fingers.

They have the house to themselves. There’s a spike of worry, but Dean calls Sam and finds out he’s just taken Jack down to SFU so he can get the full spring break party experience.

“And what are you gonna do?” Dean quips, “Play chaperone?”

Sam laughs. “Well, you’re not  _ that  _ far off. I know he drinks with  _ us _ sometimes, but I know how different it is, and well... I thought I’d just sit in the car a few blocks away, uh… read a book, and make sure he doesn’t get into any trouble that he can’t get out of.”

“Missing stakeouts that bad, huh?”

“Oh yeah,” Sam plays along with the joke, “Just... miserable without ‘em.”

There’s something in the answer that seems elusive, some missing piece of information that suggests the whole truth is being withheld, but Dean doesn’t have time to analyze it. The second he hangs up the phone, he is ambushed: pressed against the wall and kissed breathless. 

“You overheard we’ve got some time, huh?” Dean laughs. 

He means it as a little prank when he slips his freezing cold hands under Cas’ shirt to warm them on his skin, mid-kiss, but it backfires when the Cas leans into it with a breathy little moan, tightening his fingers in Dean’s hair. 

They might just find their way in this new world yet.


	12. Something Ends, Something Begins

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is really just a wrap-up chapter, and yes, the title is a reference to the non-canon short story by the author of the Witcher books.

[Soundtrack: Heaven is a Place on Earth, by Belinda Carlisle](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-WP6POdTgY)

Epilogue: Something Ends, Something Begins

It’s almost two weeks into April when they can finally move into the House at Singer Salvage. 

The place is a little different from its bar-napkin origins, but the critical stuff is still there. At the back of the house is Dean's sunny kitchen with a laminate-topped island, a work triangle, and about a million cabinets. On the first floor and off to one side, there's Sam's closet-sized office with french doors. The porch wraps all the way around the house. It just  _ also  _ happens to have the accessibility features Sam insisted on, so they could, quote,  _ “get old and die here, instead of terrorizing some nursing home.” _

The idea of getting old enough to where the width of the hallway or the style of a doorknob makes a difference, to Dean, is terrifying and lovely all at once. 

Despite the place being half empty (they don’t have a lot to put in it, to start with) a housewarming party is another non-negotiable point.

Wren’s flight lands surprisingly ahead of schedule, something about the wind, and Sam’s delayed: he's still out getting what sounds like a truly phenomenal amount of snacks and alcohol, so Dean’s the one who has to pick them up from the airport. It’s the first time he’s met them in person, but fortunately their fashion is ostentatious enough to pick out in the arrivals crowd -- sure, they’re five foot nothing, but the fluttering Hawaiian shirt layered over the black tank top is just about enough to make Dean go blind. 

He doesn’t really know what to say to them. It’s awkward. Wren’s been such a  _ presence  _ insofar as they’re the reason Sam’s always smiling at his phone, but they’re also largely a mystery, and what do you say to someone like that?

What he really wants to say,  _ thanks for being there for Sam,  _ seems a little overly familiar, but  _ nice weather  _ seems too distant. He wonders if it’s still verboten to ask someone how they got into hunting -- no matter how briefly they were at it -- when all that’s in the past now.

And then, stopped at a red light, Dean catches sight of the button on their bag strap that says,  THERE IS NO WHY. 

“Trapped in the amber of this moment, huh?” Dean ventures to complete the Vonnegut reference. 

A slow smile transforms Wren’s face, and with that, they actually  _ do  _ have something to talk about, and Dean thinks that maybe all this business will be tolerable after all.

* * *

  
  


“Wait wait wait,” Dean teases Sam at the threshold between kitchen and back porch, “It took you two  _ how _ long to actually sort this out?”

“Wait your _ self _ !” Wren shoots back, pushing big round glasses up their nose, “You’re one to talk! I  _ read  _ the Supernatural books, and--”

“OH-kay I take it back, I take it back, I don’t want to go down  _ any _ conversational avenue that starts _ that  _ way.”

“He’s delicate about the books,” Sam snickers conspiratorially. Wren's short enough Sam has to practically bend over to do it, but then, that's always been a near-guarantee to be the case, hasn't it? 

Dean splutters, “What, and you’re not!?”

“If it makes you feel any better, they weren’t very good,” Wren offers.

Sam just shrugs. “I guess I’ve made my peace with it.”

Dean’s not sure if it  _ does _ make him feel any better or not. He settles for rolling his eyes and splitting off to get another beer from one of the coolers on the back porch, muttering along the lines of  _ “...Just ‘cause  _ you _ got to take a shot at the guy who wrote ‘em…” _

Beyond the cooler, he takes a second to watch Jack in the backyard with Claire. Evidently, she hasn’t given up being a badass in the absence of monsters, because she and Alex are demonstrating some kind of… Dean doesn’t know what it is. Judo, maybe? There’s a throw involved. 

"Is that a squint I see?” Comes the unmistakable force of nature with accent like she stepped out of the television (Fargo, specifically.) “When’s the last time you had your eyes checked? You know my uncle started to need glasses right around your age.”

“What age?” Dean pretends to be offended at Donna’s suggestion, exaggerating downwards, “Twenty five?”

“Well you  _ do  _ look better than you did on the camera a few months back, I’ll give ya that.” She beams at him, a smile almost too bright to behold. “Don’t worry, I won’t dwell. I was just so worried, and look atcha now! Like a whole new man!”

Dean lets himself sigh -- it grates, to be compared-to-and-reminded-of the most recent of many brushes with rock bottom, but aside from that, it is actually a little gratifying to hear her say it. He shrugs widely. “Yep, I’m the comeback kid, alright. What’s the situation over there? She holding up okay? I mean, she was pretty devoted to hunting.” 

Donna follows where Dean’s gesturing with his beer-hand. “Claire? Oh, yeah, she had a bit of a rough minute there, but she’s moving out in a coupla weeks. Got a job in Lincoln, teaching self defense classes for ladies!”

“No shit?”

“I was hoping she’d get interested in police work, but that mighta been a bit of a longshot to start with. Hey, who’s that behind--”

“DEAN. BLOODY. WINCHESTER.” Rowena swans through the back door in an explosion of jewel tones and makes the substantial effort to reach up and smack Dean upside the head. “Would it  _ kill  _ you to phone every once in awhile?” She catches Donna’s eye and says, “Men, am I right?”

“Won’t get an argument from me there,” Donna says into her Corona.

Charlie’s right on Rowena’s heels. Did they carpool?

Fortunately, he doesn’t need to give her the full run-down. It sounds like she got the general version from Sam already, and she’s mostly more interested in discussing her  _ own _ adventures (and misadventures) in any case. At first, Donna regards the baroque camp of Rowena's demeanor like a Labrador tasting a lime, but the story is a good one, and it doesn't take too long before Rowena's won her over.

Once Dean gets out from under the ten ton weight of Rowena’s storytelling (Patience wanders over and takes his place, allowing him to slip away) he gets to give a tour of the place to The Other Bobby, who is fascinated by the patch of land his other-world self had made his own. He remains persistent in his disdain for the overall climate, despite the pleasant weather of the day. 

Dean also gets a quick chat with Garth alone once Bess is wrapped up in conversation with Jody and Jules. The transition back to human has been bumpy, and that's where the conversation stays, with Dean's gentle persistence.  By the sounds of things, it’s been a lot harder on Bess, but Garth, in his usual wholesome manner, is “as proud as a peacock” of her grit and determination in getting used to humanity. Seems there’s a lot of that going around, these days. 

They’re far enough into the yard that there’s a good view of the house, and Garth is actually a little teary-eyed, looking over it all. “He’d be proud of all this,” Garth explains. “Imagine he saw this place. He’d love it. You know he’d love it.”

"I think he'd have his complaints," Dean admits. "It's not very defensible."

"I think that's what he'd like about it most of all."

They get interrupted by the crackle of wheels on dirt and stones, followed by Sam’s voice, (and Dean can tell he’s being deliberately loud enough to be heard as a head’s-up) saying,_ “He’s over there, with Garth.”_

Both of them veer around the shed to see who’s looking for them. 

“Jesse! Cesar!” Dean speeds up a little, hugs them both in turn. “All the way from New Mexico?!”

“Wasn’t such a bad drive, pretty scenic if you take the right route.” Cesar points to big cardboard case sitting in the back of the pickup. “Also, we brought some La Cumbre!” 

Dean goes to introduce Garth, only to find out that they’re already well-acquainted, in fact it seems that Garth had met them both long before Dean ever did.

“How’s the horse business treating you?” Dean prods.

“A lot better than I expected, I gotta say,” Jesse admits, sharing a knowing, secret smile with Cesar. “You should come visit the ranch!”

_ Visit the ranch!  _ Dean thinks, breaking into an involuntary smile at the mental image of himself on a horse again, hat and all. “Don’t joke,” he says, “‘Cause I’ll actually take you up on that.”

“Might like to get on a horse again myself,” Garth says, “now that they won’t be so spooked by me anymore. Silver linings, huh?”

Alright, Dean admits that one was pretty clever. _Silver linings. _

The four of them walk back up toward the house and cross paths with Cas, shrugging on a brown windbreaker and clearly in a hurry. Dean stops him with a press at his elbow. “Beer run?”

“Airport,” Cas answers.

“Who?” Dean frowns. “I can--”

Cas stops him with a tight little head-shake. “Anael.”

Over the past year, Cas had made far more effort than Dean really considered strictly necessary to try and connect, to see if any angels made it through the way he did. Only recently did he finally locate Anael, by all appearances the only other survivor. She hadn’t been terribly interested in correspondence at first, too bitterly busy carrying the weight of her newfound humanity.

_ Just because we’re from the same place doesn’t mean we have to be friends now,  _ she’d said, patient but cold, on one of the few occasions that she actually replied to a message. 

Despite everything, Dean was the one to suggest inviting her anyway. Cas had been dubious but didn’t see the harm. The invitation was met with silence, and they’d sort of figured that was the end of it. 

He’s less than thrilled with her treatment of Cas, but the idea of that ice possibly thawing clearly means a lot, and a last-minute guest isn’t exactly a burden. Dean gives Cas' shoulder a squeeze and he's off.

The sound of shattering glass hits like an arrow, from somewhere inside. It's startling, but innocuous. 

“Garth, you wanna do some introductions and give the tour for me? I gotta--” Dean gestures inside, and Garth nods. 

"Tell 'em party foul for me!" Cesar calls after him as he jogs up the sun-washed stairs.

He almost stops to say hi to Krissy, but Claire's soaking her in an unsubtle-but-reasonably-smooth flirtation -- she flashes him a look that says with absolute clarity,  _ not now _ and he passes them by with only a wave. 

There’ll be time later. 

* * *

The weather's got almost everybody outside, so when Sam takes a call, he does it in the half-empty living room. Dean's got one ear out, as always, even from a couple rooms away. When it sounds like the directions aren't going well, he trails into the room to see if he can do anything to help.

“Yeah, it’s kind of hard to find,” Sam explains, pacing back and forth in the half-empty living room, “You gotta… no, you went too far, it’s before that. Yeah, with the big painted rock.” He gets through a few more instructions before he hangs up.

“Who’s that?” Dean glances at the phone. 

“Aaron,” Sam says. 

“Oh, shit,” Dean says, and does a gesture that vaguely suggests _big dude _“What about the uh--” 

“Gone. A pile of clay dust the second the switch flipped. Apparently saw it coming, though, so they were able to say their goodbyes.”

That’s something, at least, Dean supposes. 

“Oh, and I wanted to tell you, Max is on the way.”

“Banes?” Dean double checks. In those first, crazy, in-between days, He’d reluctantly helped Rowena out with the dispersal of hunting weapons. The whole time, though, he basically refused any conversation not absolutely necessary to the job at hand and he promptly dropped off the map after the world flipped right-side-out again. Dean expected they might never hear from him, and while that was a bummer, it isn't exactly as if he's had any plans on prying.

“He’s... not in great shape,” Sam cautions. “Maybe steer clear of family stuff, when you talk to him.”

A couple of car doors slam shut outside, and a glance out the window tells them Cas is back with Anael. 

She storms up the front walk ahead of Cas, passes Dean entirely, strides through two sets of doors and up to Sam, and says, “You shot him, before he fucked off? Is that right?”

Sam looks past them both to where Cas is a few steps behind, and then back to Anael. He nods. 

“Good,” Anael says. “I’m a little jealous, but… good. I’m glad someone took a piece out of him. I hope it hurt.”

* * *

As the night wears on, the last car to crowd into the haphazard parking area carries Linda Tran. She’d said she would come, but Dean was starting to think she’d changed her mind (and he wouldn’t blame her at all if she had) but here she is, bearing armfuls of housewarming gifts -- mostly snacks, but also some soaps and potpourri, wrapped in bright, colorful paper. When Dean starts setting up the bonfire in the backyard, she helps eagerly and with a slightly alarming amount of bonfire-related knowledge. 

Jack becomes her new favorite Winchester when he explains what happened in the empty (as much as he can recall, at any rate) and that the big glowy ball was made of all the souls, and that it was somehow involved in the way things are now. 

“So you’re saying… Kevin was part of... that?” She says, gesturing to the sky, not taking her eyes off the fire. 

“I suppose he was,” Jack says, applying what he’s learned of tact. “And… if what Sam and Dean say about him is true, I guess none of this could have happened without him.”

Dean takes a few steps away, to survey the party, aside from the odd, friendly pair that Jack and Linda make. He catalogs the images, taking mental snapshots that he can return to later:

There’s Rowena, Max, and Aaron, along with -- to Dean’s surprise -- Beth and Anael, the lot having taken up residence in the kitchen, maudlin-drunk and loudly lamenting the things they miss about a more mystical, cryptic life. It’s good-natured complaining, though, the kind you do to bond -- and they are certainly doing _ that.  _

“But do you know what?” Rowena says, leaning close to Max. 

“What?”

“I don’t even want it.”

“What?” Anael cuts in, “You were… what, the most powerful witch… ever? How do  _ you _ not miss magic?”

“Oh, aye, I miss power. I miss convenience. But I realized something. You, both of you, and old Castiel, and me… we were never any better than the borrowers.” Rowena's voice is low at first, obviously building to something. 

“How do you figure?” Max frowns over his drink. “Anael and Castiel were angels, and you and I never made any deals with the devil.”

“We went around acting like we were better than they were,” Rowena preaches, “but we _never were._ Sure we were born that way, but we were just borrowers too, from somebody else, who used us, no different than the demons used the witches we mocked.”

“God,” Max says, understanding.

Rowena spits on the brand new tile floor. 

“Hey!” Dean invades their little post-magical revolutionaries meeting to protest. “New house!”

“He used us, for his little stories." Rowena ignores him, growing in volume and intensity like she might climb onto a tabletop at any moment. "He could show up on this bloody doorstep right now and offer me everything back again for free, and I’d do just that. Spit in his face. All my life trying to escape being used, and he was  _ using me all along!” _

“Fuck yeah he was!” Anael raises her drink. “Fuck him!”

“He  _ used you,  _ Max! He _ took _ your _sister_ from you! For the  _ pathos!  _ We’ve got more power than we  _ ever  _ had, just by being free of  _ him.” _

“Know what, you’re right!” Max says, and he stands a little straighter. 

“So to hell with that useless, heartless, gutless swine! No--there_ is_ no hell anymore. To  _ nothing _ with him!”

The whole kitchen toasts to that.

Past the back doors there’s the tight, contained, circle of what Dean mentally calls  _ the next generation,  _ originally consisting of Claire, Alex, and Patience, but who have also gleefully accepted Krissy into their ranks in the space of a coupe hours.

Far enough away not to hover, but not so far they can’t keep one eye on their flock, Jody and Donna are looking at something on Donna’s phone screen together, with open amusement. Jody covers her face with her hand and shakes her head. Dean catches the edge of Jody’s “...gotta be kidding me…” he can’t figure out what or who she might be poking fun at.

Around the other side of the fire, there’s Bobby and Charlie. The whole thing’s a bit much for them, Dean thinks. Since the third or fourth time they’ve been mistaken for their other selves, they’ve been sticking fairly closely together. Jesse, Cesar, and Jules are all with them, subdued but seemingly relaxed in the company of other long-time veterans.

There’s also Wren and Garth, leaning on the porch railing by the door. Wren may have started out shy (and clinging like a barnacle to Sam) but their reticence is no match for the power of Garth’s genuine warmth. 

For a second, Dean entertains the notion of giving some kind of speech, but forgets it the moment Cas and Sam emerge from the house. As soon as he’s in range, Sam tosses a beer, and Dean  _ does _ catch it, if not particularly gracefully.

“Everything turned out pretty good, huh? I guess we did alright.” Sam comments, coming to a rest beside Dean, looking into the fire alongside him.

On his other side, Cas silently slips his hand into Dean’s, and Dean squeezes back.

“Yeah,” Dean agrees. “I guess we did.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for coming on this happy little stroll with me through the woods of my feelings, and sitting with me in this treehouse I built to sit in when the real show is stressing me out. 
> 
> If you liked something, if it's worked for you, I will always appreciate the sweet, sweet validation of a comment, even if it's as incoherent has half the comments I leave on other people's stories.


End file.
